NINJA GAIDEN 4

The ultimate meeting of precision and style

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Even in the early sections of Ninja Gaiden 4, Team Ninja and PlatinumGames' intentions are made clear. Yakumo, the latest recruit to the Hayabusa clan, advances along the roof of a rattling freight train. Waves of enemies leap aboard to halt his progress.

He spins and sidesteps, countering attacks, severing limbs and finally executing foes with a deep, lunging katana stab. As arterial spray rains down, Yakumo holds a sleek, arching pose like an Olympic gymnast waiting for applause. But he's interrupted by a pair of futuristic gunships. Missiles streak through the air. Bullets make glowing orange holes in the sheet metal around Yakumo's feet.

As the gunships fire a climactic fusillade, the eponymous ninja dives from the roof of the train, limbs splayed, the very image of an '80s martial-arts movie star. The logo is stamped across the screen. The tone has been established; it's stylised, kinetic and absurd, and in an age of battle royales and expansive open worlds, also bracingly naïve.

The series has always occupied a curious space in videogames. Simultaneously a relic of the arcade era and a harbinger of the modern action genre, rather than chasing trends, Ninja Gaiden's various developers have given it long life by gradually refining its unique identity. The original 1988 Ninja Gaiden was most noteworthy for its atmosphere, built on grainy interludes of vengeance and dusk that proved videogame violence could be stylised to an operatic degree. The series came into its own in 2004, when Dead Or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki reimagined Gaiden for Xbox; long before FromSoftware made uncompromising difficulty a selling point, 2004's