It must be tough being a ninja, well it sure is for Ryu Hayabusa. Sure you can shimmy up lift shafts without waiting for the lift but when the demons are knocking on the door you know that you are going to be working overtime. So apart from a few annoying camera niggles it's good to get back into the brutal hack'n'slash world of Ninja Gaiden and this time with next gen polish and all the decapitations you could ever wish for.

After playing Assassins Creed where guards can be finished off with bit of a wait and a well-timed counter, it's tough to get back into a game where a few seconds of lost concentration can see you pummelled into a corner and half your health whipped away. We all know that Lee from Enter the Dragon was nails but those bad guys politely queued up one at a time, received a boot to the face and theatrically toppled over. In Ninja Gaiden II the amount of attackers is only limited by how many can crowd around you at once.

Yet despite all this carnage, I don't think I have ever played a game with such an amazing 'flow.' When it's all going well you flit between enemies making hit and run attacks until you can get a bit of space to launch a charged up Ultimate Technique, then use the essence from that to launch another and so on. It's strangely exhilarating to charge a pack of 10 enemies and take them all down in 30 seconds without taking a scratch. Although the price of failure is pretty high, once you are 'in the zone' there aren't many games like it.