I'll get right to the meat to my views on Ninja Gaiden, since I promised one after I slammed DMC4 pretty bad. So lets get started. (please note there's bound to grammar errors, so bear with me...)

Graphics -
Like the typical Team Ninja game everything is realllyyy shiny. I mean even the pink demons, enemy soldiers all look like they been buffed with turtle wax. The texture work all is pretty bland too. Team ninja needs to take a look at Gears of War and DMC4 to see what interesting texture can do for a game. But still it looks good and the game runs really quick but there's just nothing really that makes you go "Wow". I have to tip my hat to DMC4 here since the art direction in that game destroys Ninja Gaiden II. It's not that the graphics suck, it's just I swear this could have been played on a regular Xbox.

Gameplay -
The core of any Ninja Gaiden game, it's still here and just as hard as ever. I was in quite a shock, when I first started playing since I was coming off DMC4. In DMC4 the enemies kinda circle around you and will attack you...whenever they get around to it. In NG 2 the enemies will aggressivly try to destroy you. Even if their legs are gone they will still crawl to you and even kamikhaze attack you. Lol. the limb cutting system is kool, I wouldn't really call it a element of the game since by the time a limb is gone you're already doing a finisher on them. But it's still very cool nonetheless. The finishers are also a lot of fun, when an enemy has lost a limb or close to death your "Y" button turns into the "#$%^ you" button and Ryu executes them in pretty gory ways. The bosses even have special ones for them as well. So the combat gets a high check mark from me since Ryu plays like a very complete character since he always has a way to avoid/block/counter just about damn near anything. Just by having a block button makes me like this game more than DMC4. I don't like having to switch styles to block or dodge (Dante), and the other character than cant do either has the throws (Nero). Ryu has all three of these abilites instead of splitting them up amongst characters like DMC4 did with Dante and Nero.

I wasn't ever worried when I played DMC4, when playing Ninja Gaiden I was always on my toes since the next batch of enemies oculd easily kill me if I wasn't careful. But the one thing that really ticked me off about this game was the camera/off screen kills. Several times during a play through the camera will turn some funky angle not letting me see the bastard ninja behind that's about to decapitate me. Dying from an enemy you can't see blows ballz. I never had camera issues in DMC4 so I'll give props to DMC4 on the camera issue.

I can't really recommend casual gamers to buy this game even if they enjoyed DMC4. this game is an entirely different breed from DMC. There is no ability to spam(Devil Bringer) or enemies that walk around and wait for you attack them. Bosses don't expose "weak spots" for you attack. You have to evade, counter and be aggressive to win. Even the flying swallow has been toned down and the enemy AI has actually learned to dodge it. Even the bosses will dodge it if you just try to spam it. (I couldn't ever hit Genshin with it...) So there's no real weapon/combo to spam to beat this game. You just have to kick the bosses @$$ to win. So this game is a real challenge especially to those that didn't play the first one. They'll probably have to buy a new controller...

In the end, for gameplay I give it to Ninja Gaiden, but DMC4 has the better art direction and all together better looking game.

P.S. Go see WANTED, saw it this morning. Really funny and has a lot of great action scenes.