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I still vividly remember Ninja Gaiden 2’s launch in 2008 even though I never played it. It may be hard to imagine now, but back in the 2000s, Team Ninja’s hack-and-slash series was briefly on the Mount Rushmore of action games (depending on who you talked to). It was praised for its stylish hyperviolence and its extreme challenge, earning Team Ninja the kind of loyal following from action aficionados that FromSoftware would begin to amass as the 2010s rolled around. Its star quickly faded in 2012 after the divisive Ninja Gaiden 3, but I still remember the series as a pillar of the early Xbox age.

It was those decades of memories that buzzed around me as I downloaded Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a surprise remake revealed and released during this week’s Xbox Developer Direct. After admiring the series from afar for such a long time, I’d finally get to see what made Ninja Gaiden such a foundation action series. Instead, I spent my first hour with it scratching my head. This is the game people made such a big fuss about?

It was a knee jerk reaction that faded the more I understood what I was playing, but one that begged to be unpacked. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black may look like a 2025 video game thanks to its Unreal Engine 5 visuals, but it’s a relic from another era. Underneath all the glitz is a 2008 time capsule that’s ancient in game development years, one that reveals how homogenized video games have become in the series’ absence.

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Time capsule

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black isn’t exactly a faithful recreation of the 2008 classic. It’s more so built from the bones of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, a 2009 PS3 port that made significant changes to the original. You can currently find angry Steam reviewers lamenting that fact,

Giovanni Colantonio