Ninja Gaiden 4 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £59.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass)
Verdict: Swish swordplay
As they say on LinkedIn, some personal news: I am now a fully qualified ninja. All it took was playing through the ten or so hours of Ninja Gaiden 4’s narrative campaign.
Well, I say ‘all it took’ — but this game can be punishingly difficult, so it takes a lot.
The fourth entry in the storied series, and the first mainline release for 13 years, maintains its forerunners’ emphasis on quick, brutal swordplay. You are not, it must be said, the stealthiest of ninjas. You go about butchering techno-baddie after techno-baddie.
Enter the ninja: A rare moment of peace for Yakumo on his mission to slay a dragon
Thankfully, the relentless combat is utterly rewarding. As Yakumo — a fully covered-up ninja who partners with a less than fully covered-up witch to purge a dead(ish) dragon from future Tokyo (don’t ask) — you have access to two main fighting styles, which you can switch between at will.
One is your standard set of slices and dices. The other is Yakumo’s time-limited ‘Bloodraven’ form, which is supremely effective against enemies’ defensive stances. Moving between the two turns each fight into an act of choreography. Add in the various special moves and weapon upgrades, and you have a veritable ballet of blood.
Sure, Ninja Gaiden 4’s predictable story doesn’t live up to this graceful combat system. Nor does its level design, with too many areas feeling grey and tunnel-like.
A ballet of blood: Two fight modes, combined with special moves and weapons upgrades, make for a brilliantly choreographed, if gory, game
But when that combat system is so good, everything else is almost beside the point.
Now bring on Ninja Gaiden 5, and hurry up about it. I need to sharpen my newly acquired skills.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Nintendo Switch, £49.99)
Verdict: Not so legendary
Welcome to Lumiose City. It’s a bit like Paris, only instead of bicyclette-riding onion-sellers cluttering the streets, there are various cutesy creatures. Some are friendly — and hang out happily with the city’s human inhabitants. Some are not — and they bite.
For Lumiose City is the setting of the latest Pokémon game, Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The Legendssuffix was introduced a few years ago for Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a spinoff title that was set centuries in the past and was more expansive than the mainline games. Whereas Z-A is both in the present and more contained. So who knows what any of it means?
There’s another crucial difference between Z-A and Arceus — and, in fact, all the other Pokémon games. Instead of the usual turn-based battles between your little critters and others, everything happens in real time. You’re still controlling what moves your Pokémon make, but now you’re doing so on the fly, rather than waiting for your go.
They’ll always have Lumiose City – which looks a lot like Paris, but with added Pokemon
It’s elegantly implemented — a simplified version of the shift the Final Fantasy series has made for its recent editions — but it’s not quite enough to make up for Z-A’s deficiencies elsewhere.
The greatest of which, compared to Arceus, is atmosphere. While the expanses of the previous Legends release were often a little too plain, they really captured the wholesome promise of the Pokémon games: wandering through the wilds and discovering little animals.
Lumiose City, by contrast, has more activities and side-quests, but it lacks that essential magic. It feels like just another 3D Pokémon game.
Which may, in fact, be the point. This Legends release looks a lot like the mainline ones, and I suspect the mainline ones will start to look like this Legends release — importing its real-time Pokémon battles. C’est la vie.
Keeper (Xbox, PC, £24.99 or included in Xbox Game Pass)
Verdict: Light in the dark
Keeper begins with a kooky-looking bird landing on a lighthouse after being attacked by a swarm of glowing, purple, wasp-y things.
The lighthouse then grows root-like legs and stumbles inland, with its new avian friend in tow.
And that is perhaps the easiest thing to explain about this game. From there on, it’s an increasingly strange, meditative, moving experience that mostly defies description and comparison.
Ray of hope: In Keeper, a lighthouse sprouts legs and heads inland, through a weirdly beautiful post-apocalyptic world, accompanied by a strange bird
It’s kinda like a walking simulator such as Firewatch (2016). It’s kinda like a puzzle-platformer such as Inside (2016). It’s kinda like Journey (2012), Gone Home (2013) and Monument Valley (2014).
But it’s also nothing like those games, not least because they don’t have you controlling a sentient lighthouse. Yes, that lighthouse is Keeper’s protagonist — of sorts. You point its beam at various parts of the environment in order to advance further.
Except that’s not quite right, either. Across its half-dozen hours, Keeper shakes up its gameplay at least a half-dozen times.
The lighthouse starts to feel more like a Swiss Army Knife, full of tricks. Nothing here is predictable.
The real joy of this game, though, is its world. It seems post-apocalyptic, in that it contains remnants of human living, but this is no dry and dreary wasteland.
Your lighthouse wanders through landscapes bursting with colour and life and intrigue. Even the rocks twist in the most attractive ways.
You’ll want to see it all. And hear it, too— this is a dialogue-free game, but its music is exquisite.
So you keep on going and going, until… who knows? Keeper doesn’t really give up its secrets. It just is. A walking lighthouse.
