Ryu Hayabusa has had a good life. After getting his start taking lunch money from youths in the arcades more than 15 years ago, he tussled his way on to home consoles in many a grand adventures served in delicious 2D. Most recently seen hanging out with the Dead or Alive girls, he seemed to have hung up his sword in exchange for some ol' rub and tug – and you can hardly blame him, for the girls undeniably possess a certain ‘je ne sais quoi' (tangibly referred to as oversized breasts) that make them difficult to deny. Now, for the first time in almost a decade, Ryu makes an Xbox-exlusive return to his roots in an all new Ninja Gaiden (that's GUY-den) – in many ways a modern update to the original successful formula.

Being of the Dragon Lineage, Ryu Hayabusa and his clansmen get the thankless job of guarding an ancient Dark Dragon Blade. Sounds ominous? Forged from the bones of a Black Dragon and infused with the soul of the slain beastie, it's safe to conclude that the power of the sword does not bode well for things good and proper if unleashed. While Ryu goes on a wilderness trek to reminisce with an old friend, his village is attacked and burned to the ground. Naturally, vengeance, bloodshed, and much dismemberment ensue.

With the aide of his Dragon Blade, another nifty family heirloom instrumental in the slayage of said Black Dragon, and ridiculously busty but otherwise entirely generic female #1 (aka Rachel if you are the particular sort), Ryu sets out for Vigoor Empire to prevent the misuse of the evil blade by those that may not much care for warning labels. The plot is simplicity reincarnate, and serves as little more than a device to have Ryu combat a variety of nasties in various colorful locales. It is nevertheless entertaining, especially since most of it is conveyed through an abundance of expertly produced CGI cutscenes.

The combat of Ninja Gaiden is hands-down the deepest and most satisfying in the action game genre. Not surprising considering it is a project of Team Ninja and Tecmo – the minds that put the bounce back in arena fighting. The game offers a robust combo system that does not sacrifice accessibility in that you can easily perform strings of deadly melee attacks using an assortment of weapons (each with unique combos). Ultimate techniques are also crucial to success in battle as they allow you to draw on the essence of slain foes to unleash devastating attack sequences that make short work of even the toughest fiends. In a clinch, Ryu also has a few magical attacks (called Ninpo attacks, and comes in 3 elemental flavors) as well as an arsenal of ranged weapons up his sleeves to even up the odds. Suffice it to say that you will be discovering new combos and new use of combat techniques well into your journey. Evildoers take heed, for the burning down of village and slaying of clansmen can make an angry ninja much less concerned with stealth and subtlety.

As you progress through the game, Ryu will become more powerful both in strength and technique, thanks to many opportunities to customize and upgrade his abilities. Health and ninpo gauges can be extended through items acquired post-battle or found in the environments. Weapons can be upgraded a finite number of times to attain their ultimate forms at the blacksmith's. New fighting techniques can be learned by purchasing technique scrolls at the store or finding them on dead bodies. Even ninpo magic can see several upgrades to increase their effectiveness if you manage to find the proper jewels.

Item hunting is actually a lot of fun and challenging in Ninja Gaiden, largely due to the inspired level design. While the game is divided into 16 chapters, you will be required to steer your way through familiar territories often, but usually using newly discovered routes. For example, the city of Tairon (in which you will spend a sizeable amount of your game time) is made up of many districts that you will unlock as you progress through the game. Eventually, you will be able to wander around the city freely to visit stores or to find hidden treasures you may have overlooked. As a skilled ninja, Ryu's incredible acrobatic skills are used to great effect, as a route does not always spell a paved brick road. You will be wall-running, triangle-jumping and back-flipping to reach many destinations and hidden areas (ala a recently revived Persian Prince). Thankfully, maps can be found and henceforth accessed easily (black button) to alleviate much of the pain associated with navigating through these often complex areas.

Refreshingly, Ninja Gaiden is a rare game in the genre that does not pit you against an overwhelming number of mindless drones at once in the hope that they eventually grind you to death. The odds are still overwhelming, but this time the threat comes from skilled enemies that possess an impressive repertoire of attacks. While grenadiers lob explosives at you from a distance, stun-baton wielding soldiers will approach you to hinder your movements. Lightning-fast ninjas will look for openings in your defenses and throw incendiary shurikens at you between frenzied sword attacks. To succeed, it is necessary for you to observe enemy attack patterns in order to find the best opportunities to strike back. In these instances, you will be thankful that Ryu is well-versed in the arts of blocking (all but the fiercest blows) and rolling (out of harms way). Level bosses work the same way, even though they can often be extremely intimidating at first glance (being either several stories tall, or airborne and incredibly agile), you can usually figure out their weaknesses along with which skills/weapons work best against them after several retries.

Sounds daunting? Let me right now dispel the myth that Ninja Gaiden is too difficult. Those that propagate this notion are, for lack of a better term, losers. You may have gleaned from my other reviews that I am in no way an expert gamer in that I bruise easily and have no qualms with wailing like a girl (who wails, of course, as not all girls share this trait) when defeated. Despite that, I was able to complete the game's rather lengthy adventure at normal difficulty level within 26 hours. The game does call for a lot of patience, and at times things can get fiendishly difficult, especially in the first handful of chapters while you get your bearings. Nevertheless, the combat is challenging but fair, and some of the physical puzzles may call for numerous attempts, and none of it is impossible.

Several mechanics of the game do help to flame the argument that the game makes things unnecessarily difficult, and at least one of them is a valid concern. The game employs a save point system where you must make your way to designated shrines scattered throughout the levels to save your progress. This would not have been an issue were enemies to not respawn in certain areas when you revisit them. With save points sometimes placed several areas away from boss encounters and a handful of tough respawning enemies in the way, things can get hairy at times. Fortunately, once you learn that enemies do not follow you outside of their designated areas, you can usually safely roll and jump your way out of these pointless battles. Still, it should be requisite for a game of this nature to place a safe point immediately before boss fights.

There are also complaints about the camera placement in Ninja Gaiden, specifically the inability to manually pan the camera around. The camera automatically tries to find the most cinematic and functional angles as you move around, and works extremely well but for the most claustrophobic spaces where it can sometimes become stuck behind walls or around corners, obstructing the action. Squeezing the right trigger on your controller solves this issue most of the time as it snaps the camera squarely behind Ryu for a better view of the battle. Still, I can understand some of the gripes as for such a challenging game, even the smallest inconvenience can become amplified ten-fold.

Even though Ninja Gaiden is strictly a single-player affair, several things add to its replay value greatly. For starters, the game is chock full of secrets to unlock. Costumes, secret weapons, more difficulty levels, and even the original Ninja Gaiden games can be unlocked for those interested. Trust me, you will want to see the lightsaber-wielding Ryu-of-the-future complete with the zinging and zanging of saber-clashes! For those with Xbox live, Ninja Gaiden allows you to enter the Master Ninja Tournament. It may sound like a multiplayer component of the game, but sadly, this is not so. The tournament is actually a scoreboard that compares game-completion scores from Live-enabled players and grants the highest-ranking players further single player challenges for prizes and fame (who doesn't want to be crowned the real-life Ryu Hayabusa...?) While a commendable effort, for most of us, the Master Ninja Tournament will serve no real purpose except to make us wish for a multiplayer component over Live.

Ninja Gaiden looks absolutely gorgeous, despite a deceptively plain start. The environments are varied and rife with details that add a lot to the realism of the game world. Every character in the game sport terrific designs incredibly fluid animations, especially Ryu. Even under the most effect-intensive situations (molten lava pits that cause air distortions, for one) the framerate shows no hint of faltering. Still, if you are out to nitpick, you may notice that much of the environments are static and indestructible (with few exceptions) and there are some occasional clipping issues. Those minute flaws aside, this is without doubt one of the most visually pleasing games to be released on any platform.

The sounds of the game are difficult to fault as well. Being a big fan of original language tracks, I was delighted to find that both English and Japanese audio are available to select from the options menu. There's not a whole lot of dialogue in the game, but what there is of sounds great, even if the English dubbing tends toward over-exaggeration. The wonderful soundtrack changes dynamically during scripted sequences as well as between areas and varies wildly between the ambient to some much more frantic techno numbers that befits the gameplay surprisingly well. The sound effects are also commendable, from the pattering of feet on walls, to the clashing of blades, and even some of the more exotic noises such as the howling of fiends sound uniformly authentic.