PixelVixen707

To the old joke about how playing Guitar Hero is a waste of time when you could be learning the real thing, comes a new riff: why waste your time as a digital ninja when you could train as a real one? And it’s true: ninja and ninjustu studios thrive in North America. I found one in the East Village, between a laundromat and a laser hair removal salon, and gave it a whirl. Hey – black is my color, blood is my yen. But standing outside for three days and three nights, petitioning for entrance, got old. A bar down the street was throwing a happy hour with $1 cheeseburgers. And the Tabi boots don’t come in my size.

So much easier to master the digital version, even though videogames pay little to no respect to any real ninja traditions, whatever those traditions may be. Take two recent examples: Ninja Gaiden II, the latest in the action/adventure franchise, and N+, a well-loved indie that comes to the XBox 360 with all-new-maps and all-new frustrations. Both take place in futuristic cultures. Both paint their stories in broad, corny strokes. And both appeal to that dying breed known as the “hardcore gamer,” who seek to prove their honor through miraculous sequences of knuckle-cracking moves. You say you can crack a stack of bricks with the flat of your hand? I can do it with my thumb.

You can play Ninja Gaiden II on easy, but that would be like using low-fat soy milk in a virgin white russian. The only reason to ratchet down the challenge would be if you’re dying to follow the story, and if so, you will be sorely disappointed. The gist: master superninja Ryu Hayabusa must avenge his clan and kill bazillions of henchmen and bosses. He’s joined at the start by Sonia of the CIA, whose breasts are so enormous and orb-like that she’s probably stopped by Customs in case she’s muling cantelopes. Ninja Gaiden II is more action than adventure, with drearier settings and duller body-filled hallways than the first XBox Ninja Gaiden, a title I rather enjoyed for its novel overkill and relentless punishment. This time, movements are faster and more fluid, and thanks to the clunky camera, your black-clad body can get lost in the fray. There’s more temptation to mash buttons, yet only total perfection will see you prevail.

More satisfying and less expensive is N+. Though it’s slicker than the original, N+ keeps the visual presentation simple: everything is grey, angular, and stark, all the better to see exactly which surface you’re trying to reach and trace exactly which jump you cannot screw up if you don’t want to start all over – like parkour, with better “splats.” Like Ninja Gaiden II, N+ doesn’t teach you much about ninjas, except that they love gold and hate lasers and mines. But it is more exacting and more merciless. Take “Upstream,” where you have to perform exactly the same bounce-off-one-wall-and-over-the-next jump eight times in a row, dodging robots and mines, just to hit a switch and then do the same jump eight times back the other way. It took me at least twenty tries to nail it, and when I say that, I’m bragging.

I’ll be frank: I don’t expect to finish either game. It’s a lifestyle choice. Of the two, I recommend N+, because it has no fluff or waste or story to get in the way of what you want from ninjas: not the blood, nor the real ultimate power, but the perfection of body and soul, and the marriage of the mind and the fingers. The tradition may be ashes and dust but the soul of the ninja lives on in games like these. As I learned that day when I was petitioning for training, “The body is the vessel for the spirits; fill it, and terror spews in its wake.”

Or maybe I heard that at happy hour.