Surprise! Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Launches Today On Xbox Game Pass

Shut up and take my money!!! Game Pass you say? Awesome!!

Stealth Dropping a ninja action game is almost poetic. Well done.

Don’t know the series, but this looks promising!

Is this why the original never ever goes on sale?

They've just been holding this in their back pocket, biding their time....

Very cool.

Ninja Gaiden II was the very first game I played on my 360 back in the day.

Ninja Gaiden II was fricking awesome. Brutal, weird, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes just plain unfair. But when it clicks, it is one of the very best action games ever made. And the gore was so ridiculously over the top and satisfying. Straight to Gamepass to download.

It'll drive you nuts, but give it a go as it may be your new favourite game.

Edit: if you've never played it before, then the sheer brutality of the gore and dismemberment will take you by surprise. In a good, slightly sociopathic kind of way.

The amount of big games coming to Gamepass this year is amazing.

Someone help me out. Is this replacing the one that's already on GP? Should I delete the one that I've downloaded a few days back and play this one instead? Are they exactly the same game with the same difficulty options etc... I'm so confused.

Holy moly!!!!!!! The hype level!!

@Kaloudz delete the other one and download this. This is the new, 'definitive' version of the game.

@Kaloudz the easiest way to check is to try and play the original and if you play it there are two versions but if you can’t only one… happened to me with the new Doom 1&2 remaster … the original 1&2 had a red x on the icon and said I didn’t own it….

@Kaloudz the version you currently have from Game Pass is Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma, which is an updated port of the PS3 version of NG:2 which was originally an Xbox 360 game. From the trailer, this new Black version appears to be a complete remake of NG:2, judging by the fact it’s got the Unreal 5 engine mentioned in the trailer.

I knew it! I guessed that it might have been Ninja Gaiden (it was in my top 20 of possible reveals).

I'm willing to give it a try. I'm a little nervous though because we used to have Ninja Gaiden on the Wii U and that game was impossible to beat. lol.

Talk about one hell of a shadow drop.

Someone from steam said it's sigma ver. Not original 2.

@Kaloudz yes definitely download this new one, i'm playing it now , and it looks amazing in UE5... high framerates too.

I did not see anything sharing there is an easy mode?

If no, I'm not wasting my time. Not have time in my life waste 10 hours of try and die to just advance 5 mins in the story.

@GuyinPA75 Hero Mode is apparently in.

@TheSilverFalcon @ChopperCampbell @AlwaysPlaying @Scrubchub Thanks a lot guys. Massively appreciated. Hopefully it's got all the modes the Sigma version has (difficulty modes).

@GuyinPA75 I'm playing the first one (it has easy mode - aka Hero Mode) and it's not overly difficult at all to be honest. In fact even when you play on easy mode, if you die three times in a row, it lets you make it even easier by offering a hand holding mode for those of us that just enjoy the story (also known as "abandoning the way of the ninja).

NG2 Sigma has the exact same modes so I'm assuming this new and improved version does too. If you've never played one before, it's exactly like Devil May Cry.

@Darude84 Don't know the series?! How old are you out of curiosity?

@Nicstockes This has gore and dismemberment so how do they figure?

@Kaloudz @ValentineMeikin Thank you guys for sharing that. If I saw Hero Mode on my own, would thought it be, a sauna, in hell, in center of the sun, type of sweaty difficulty mode.

At least for me, games like ninja gaiden are meant to let the player be super overpowered tank going thru the story slaughtering every thing in your way.

I absolutely despise games where I have wait for the boss to fart, then jump three times with light attack, then wait for boss to burp, roll 5 times with medium, light, heavy attack. Repeat that same sequence for an hour, for each of the boss's 27 forms. But if accidentally, hit medium, heavy, light attack combo, the boss one hits you a sneeze.

Not. Enjoyable. At. All. Ever.

@GuyinPA75 Yeah it's a far cry from games like Wo Long. In fact the only reason I've just started playing them is because all these years I heard they were super hard and Souls-like, and they're not like that at all. It's very easy on Hero Mode. When you go low on health you become invincible until you gain health orbs (enemies drop them).

You can still die on Hero Mode but it doesn't happen very often. Plus, NG2 is said to be the easiest of the three. So there's that too.

@SleeplessKnight 40. Been gaming for 28 years but never heard of it.

40 years old and have been gaming for 28 years and Never heard of Ninja Gaiden? Really?! I find that baffling!

I'm so happy for this! Here's hoping a NG 3 Black will follow.

Goddamn, it's so good. I flipping loved this game back in the day and it's still just as good.

Few tips for newbies - flying swallow technique is essential. Jump and then Y button. Also, use the walls. Run straight up a wall and heavy attack. Causes Ryu to divebomb into the ground and cause splash damage. Essential as it can stagger a group of enemies in one go allowing you to go to town on them.

Stick with one weapon, and get it fully upgraded as soon as possible. Then you can purchase healing items throughout the game. Save the healing items for boss fights if you can.

Items that expand your health bar also replenish your health so save those for boss fights as well. Basically an extra healing items.

Use the ninpo a lot. It isn't as powerful as its animation suggests but it can stagger enemies, which is the aim. Then slice and dice with your weapon.

@Kaloudz Sigma sounds a world apart from Ninja Gaiden Black and II, then! I'm normally a competent gamer (I beat the NES game, just as an example), but I felt that Black's difficulty was a little excessive, forcing me to focus on perfecting a single weapon instead of experimenting. This was on Normal; I knew about Ninja Dog mode, but it was never offered to me.
NGII on 360 just drove me crazy, even on easy mode (Acolyte). I still haven't finished it. Though I largely blame it on having to wait 20 seconds to reload the stage after every death. If there was a simple "retry" option in the pause menu, it would've been much less of an issue. I wonder how NG2 Black will stack up in this regard.

Seeing the UE5 version of one of my all time favorites in the download section was quite the surprise.

Congratulations to Microsoft as well for publishing a new game in a genre that deserves to come back.

The last time I played a Ninja Gaiden game was decades ago on the SNES and it was balls hard…I decided to start playing through the games in the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection to brush up on things before jumping into this new entry lol

I’ll check it out on Hero mode, I definitely don’t have interest in a petrifying slog, lol.

@smoreon See, I'm like you. I'd class myself as fairly competent. I'm having very little issue with NG1 (again, I'm playing on easy mode) but I have yet to use the super easy option that pops up when you die three times. Most of my play time I have been playing with invincibility that turns on when you're low on health. I heard that 1 is harder than 2, so I'm hoping that easy mode on 2 is just like it is in NG1 (I've heard it is) - and that NG2 Black offers it too (which I've heard it does). But yeah, the load times are annoying. Fingers crossed this remaster doesn't have those issues. Are you gunna give it a try, on easy?

Game pass version is yet again inferior to the Steam one - as it has no DLSS support at all. Hope they patch it in as UE5 games need all the help they can get.

Almost beat normal mode last night. So happy they shadow dropped this.

@Kaloudz It's not the easiest. It's the hardest.

@Kaloudz "I heard that 1 is harder than 2"

I'd heard the same, but I found that vanilla NG2 is harder (and more "cheap") than NG1 Black. And most of the NES NG1, for that matter.

Unsure on what I'll do with the series from here: go back and try to finish II and Razor's Edge, start over with Sigma, or shift over to the remake. I don't have GP, so I won't just be hopping into NG2 Black on a whim!

@smoreon Ah right. See I've done a bit of digging into this new one. Apparently it does indeed have accessibility mechanics in there to make it easier for people like me (and I am assuming you) via the hero mode, as well as the ability to make it even easier after that if you die three times in a row. If you're not on GP though, it's definitely a riskier move. Perhaps sub for a month? Seeing as NG 1 - 3 Sigma, and NG 2 Black are all in the service?

@Kieduss Really? Literally everywhere I read about it, the consensus is that it's the easiest of 1, 2 and 3.

If we're comparing the hardest difficulty, yes, definitely.

I forgot how painfullly hard this game was 🥳🥳🥳

@Scrubchub Hello there friend.
Your first post explained the exact feelings this game gives you, so kudos for that.
The normal mode is fairly easy, but the other difficulties though.....
But when the gameplay loop clicks and you realize how much of a powerhouse Ryu Hayabusa really is..... Nothing is more satisfying then literally obliterating every enemy in your way.
Such an awesome series and I´m so happy is finally back.
Currently enoying NG Black 2 while waiting for Ninja Gaiden 4.
Cheers and have a good one