Ninja Blade is a good game that doesn't take itself seriously, but also puts fun over gameplay
Ok, so lets start with the story. You play as Ken and essentally, an inhuman race that the humans call "Parasites" has come to earth and is taking over human bodies to create an empire. They take over your father and another member of your ninja squad and slaughter your team, luckily you survive because of your "special blood". In other words for some reason you are immune to the Parasites and because of this it's up to you to stop them. There are a few twists in the story aswell to spice things up a bit.
The game is set in near future Japan and it feels like it. The enviroments, though not as good looking and clean as some other games are all still well rendered, and the overall look of the game is quite charming to say the least.
The levels are well designed aswell. With multiple pathways often in your view, leaving you to decide where you want to go and when you want to. Although occasionally it can get a little bland with you just going through corridors and the like, but this is mainly in the earlier levels and the design gets better as the game goes along.
Another things that gets better as the game goes along is the boss battles. Every boss has their own particular weaknesses to exploit and use against them. The bosses are nice and varied aswell, one level you will be fighting mutiple targets all with different techniques, and then, the next level you will be against a 50ft stone soldier. This leads me to the main focal point of the game aswell. As whenever you defeat a boss you get to do a quick time event. These are fast paced scenes where you have to press the right button at the right time when prompted on screen. If you miss one of the buttons or leave it to late the game literally rewinds itself to the beginning of the sequence so you have another try at it. Some people may call this cheating, but it makes the game for fast paced and fluent that it wouldn't have been otherwise. These sequences are great fun to play out, and add a cinematic feel to the game, but you just can't help but get the feeling that it relies on these quick time events a little to much and they are sometimes just used to get to a different place.
As for the gameplay itself it's fun but flawed. You get to do some amazing combos on the enemies, but throughout the game there's only 4 or 5 of them for each weapon, a bit pitiful when you compare it to Ninja Gaidens almost endless combo counter. Also, while on the subject of enemies I had better point out that they are generic and boring, with no real variation in ways to beat them or in the way they look unlike the bosses.
However, the one one thing that Ninja Blade excels at not taking itself seriously. The story and game itself is quite dark and mysterious, but when you take some time to look at the secrets and unlockables (of which there are many) you realise that it wants the story to be serious, so that you can make yourself look ridiculous when playing it. The main cause of this is the outfits. In Ninja Blade you are able to customize and colour Ken with a wide range of clothing and symbols. Some of them look very cool and the kind of thing you would expect a Ninja to wear, but then there are clown suits, rainbow suits and even cheetah print vest for all your wacky needs.
Overall Ninja Blade is a good game that doesn't take itself seriously and just wants the player to have a good time. The story is a little short and the enimies and gameplay is a bit limited, but if your just looking for a quick burst of fun you'll have a hard time finding anything more enjoyable than this.
8/10