Off Day! Ninja Gaiden II!

Tuesday was the day of Ninja Gaiden II's release. There was an event at Funan so I took leave to go and collect the game (didn't want to be distracted at work). I woke up pretty early and went to Funan at 12 noon when the redemption began. The queue was longer than I expected (there were over 400 pre-orders after all) but it moved very quickly as there were 3 redemption counters. I got my game and the nice T-shirt (good thing it was Large).

The whole thing was a rather simple affair, with a redemption counter, retail booths and many demo stations. And there was an emcee who kept referring to the game as "Ninja GAY-den" (it's 'Guy', not 'Gay'!).

I met up with Shein and his classmate who were there to collect the game as well. We hung out at KFC until the 1 pm lucky draw for a the NG2-skinned Elite X360 console. Oh well, no luck for any of us. I wanted to catch Ryu Hayabusa & his two lovely ladies for a photo opportunity but I felt a little shy. haha.

When Shein & friend left, I went to shop around until Akira arrived at 1:30 pm. We had lunch at Pasta Mania, talked about games, WoW, and joked about the boob nerf in Age of Conan (they were imbalance! Nerf!). We then made our way to Books Kinokuniya at Orchard. I took my time browsing and chanced upon The Art of Mass Effect. Unfortunately, it was bundled with a guidebook that I had no use for so I dropped the idea. We then went over to the hobby shop at CineLeisure where Akira picked up several new figures to add to his Pinky St. collection.

I cabbed home and eagerly popped in Ninja Gaiden II to play. I have always heard that the series was well-known for being difficult and unforgiving. Which was why I started the game on easy mode. I played for a couple hours and it was great fun. The regular enemies were very aggressive and all bosses thus far killed me in a few hits. But really, getting thrashed by cool-looking bosses with awesome specials is what make these games so fun. (The game only served to remind me of DMC4's very sad boss roster.)

Also, in a most surprising turn of events, NGII creator Itagaki left Tecmo and is now suing them. Right on the day of the game's release! Now that's pretty controversial. I actually didn't know about the guy until I started reading up on NGII and now he just leaves after putting out his last great game. Ah, well, he seems like a really talented guy so I hope he joins a new studio and carries on with his work.