"How many lives has that hand taken? Hundreds? Thousands?"

But they went with simplifying a few of the concepts and adding a lot of repetition. There is little to no thought in the game aside from figuring out the cheesy patterns of the bosses. Basically, you walk in the room, then slash and slash. Rinse and repeat.

Ninja Gaiden I and II had a bit of storyline and item collection which made it lengthy than this 3rd installment. Sure, the difficulty is still there (in Master Ninja and Ultimate Ninja [DLC anticipated]), but the repetition makes it a bit boring.

Storyline wise, it gets a bit interesting, but I believe that the curse Ryu deals with should come into play more effectively. If it is the Grip of Death, it should hinder Ryu in battle in a way to think and have less convenient  means of winning. There could be a sense of timing, such as if Ryu takes too long, the curse kills him or begins to take his energy. A mere expansion behind the storyline if the hero is truly a hero or a murder would have been nice.

On a final note, Karma

This is what justifies me to basically grill this game. I’m a guy who did the ‘karma runs’ in Ninja Gaiden Black and NG2. The point where I would throw the controller, constant restarts to get higher scores, and the abuse of combos & ultimate attacks. I do not feel the same zeal behind it when I  started Master Ninja. Honestly, with the repetition, I just feel like I do not need to get tired, much less put the scores down as I did in NGB and2.

Scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 6 on the difficulty scale,  a 8 on my “I get bored” scale, a 10 on frustration (because of Master Ninja and Ultimate Ninja Trials), but a bonus goes to the Clan Battles. I dig em.

What are YOUR thoughts?

-L.E.

Over the 24 hours, I had ZenMod9 on my HTC Evo Shift 4G. It was the most stable, however 3 bugs afflicted it: no camera, the keyboard not being 100% mapped, and a few graphics glitches. These can be worked around, making this ICS rom a good test. It is still in Alpha and progressing along nicely.

Overall, I am impressed with ICS, but it’s not quite frozen yet. Right now, it’s the ICS that just got home after driving about 30 minutes from the grocery store. Piece of advice: LET IT FREEZE!

-that is all

Specialist Package:
2 Kills – Hardline
4(3) Kills – Sleight of Hand
6(5) Kills – Quickdraw

This setup got me a crazy 18-kill streak which once uploaded to COD Elite, I will post on YouTube.

Stats
I am mediocre by all means, however, put me in a game and chances are, I will have a .7 or greater K/D ratio.

Level 50 – 2nd Prestige
.87 overall K/D ratio
Highest Kill Streak – 18
Roughly 70 hours played: only translates to 2.9 days of gameplay since launch.

For those who use COD Elite, look up LosEvolution. I need to get my PSN stats as strong as my Xbox stats!

1. A nice Merry Christmas text, call or card.
2. ASUS VH236H Black 23″ Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor w/ Speakers (got)
3. Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW080G3K5 2.5″ 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
4. dreamGEAR Power Brick Rechargeable Battery Twin Pack for Xbox 360 Black (Got)
5.  ZOTAC ZT-50403-10L GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
6. Austin: The Bottom Line on the Most Popular Superstar of All Time Blu-Ray (got)
7. 2x HDMI cables (got)
8. Fossil Roman Leather Watch (got)
9. Clothes
10. Greek Apparel

Team Deathmatch

On the 360, look for ‘losevolution.’ I’m somewhat average, with a .7 K/D ratio and rocking a suppressed SCAR with Slight of Hand Pro. Not bad for 3 hours, but I am definitely aiming to get better. I’m playing with a few guys on the Xbox 360, using the [GaYF] clantag. I’ll also be on the PS3, rocking the [SAND] clan tag soon.

Honestly, I haven’t observed the other modes yet, but I am working on it. The SpecOps will definitely be the next target.

So, who else has tried this game?

I play the NFS series on both PC and 360, which means me and Need for Speed get along great. It plays relatively the same as Hot Pursuit, with a good bit of challenges, especially the 2nd part of the demo. It appears to be worth the purchase and the run from one side of the country to the next seems interesting. Definitely download this badboy on 360 or PS3 and look up LosEvolution on both consoles. I got some stats in these maps that will amaze you (or make you laugh).

Results will be displayed at the end of the week.

1. Run a command prompt as an administrator. To do this, type cmd in the search box, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose “Run as administrator.”

2. At the command line, type in the following:

powercfg -energy -output \Folder\Energy_Report.html

where \Folder represents the folder where you want the report to be placed.

3. For about a minute, Windows 7 will examine the behavior of your laptop. It will then analyze it and create a report in HTML format in the folder you specified. Double-click the file, and you’ll get a report — follow its recommendations for ways to improve power performance.

For more, check out this article.