The genius of this demo is its replayability. There are few, if any, cheesy exploits or button-bashing shortcuts that'll prevent the need to fully master Sigma's control method. While it's still an extremely tough game (even this demo is no pushover), it merely illustrates that Ninja Gaiden requires time to master. Gameplay is what matters though and despite the closeness to the Xbox version, Sigma plays beautifully - a hack and slash game with a control method so good to use, so wonderfully refined, that there's never been anything else quite like it. Fewer pixels to render means faster frame rates, with the RSX GPU scaling up each frame to 1920x1080 before it reaches your display. There's a touch more lag and more v-sync issues than 720p, but it's clear from the scaling artifacts that it's not a 1920x1080 game chances are that Team Ninja are using one of the 'pseudo-1080p' modes added to the more recent versions of the PS3 SDK, where 1280x10x1080 support were added. Speaking of which, Ninja Gaiden Sigma's 1080p support is somewhat odd. So much so that even though we tried to avoid capturing it in our screenshots, a couple of instances are still there in both 720p and 1080p galleries. Just like the Xbox version, Ninja Gaiden Sigma also runs at 60 frames per second, but the demo suffers pretty badly from v-lock sync issues - particularly when the most spectacular special effects are employed. The biggest differences are in the visuals - while it appears that the basic geometry used to create the levels is all but identical to the original Xbox version, the PS3 code benefits from completely redrawn, absolutely gorgeous textures, and subtle but beautiful lighting. In terms of content, you're essentially getting exactly the same taster level as Xbox gamers did way back in 2004 - an exploratory sortie through the ninja village with a token puzzle to 'solve' before facing off against a nunchuka-wielding end-of-level boss. However, initial impressions of the demo are somewhat underwhelming. Available now on the Japanese and US branches of the PlayStation Store, Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden Sigma demo is an intriguing first look at what could well become the PS3's most intense, hardcore action game.
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