13 h. ago ‘A force of nature who took no prisoners’: a tribute to Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki

The driving force behind Team Ninja was a game development samurai who almost always won his battlesGame designer and ex-Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki died last week aged 58. He was famous for his sunglasses, long black hair, leather jackets – and his penchant for using colourful second world war metaphors to describe game development, marketing strategies and just about anything else. A pugnacious talent, he rocked the boat and made waves in almost every aspect of his life.Itagaki joined Japanese game developer Tecmo in 1992, as a young programmer, where he led the creation of the fighting game series Dead or Alive, the first instalment of which was released in 1996. He famously picked a long-running fight with Namco’s Tekken series, after that company’s marketing team ran an ad that he found disparaging. The resulting one-sided beef put his fighting franchise on the world stage in the early 2000s. After Dead or Alive 3, he turned his attentions to beach volleyball as a palette ...

Events

31 h. ago Ninja Gaiden 4 review: Brutal, speedy, bloody combat that's addictive fun on Xbox

Team Ninja is back after 13 years with the first mainline entry in the Ninja Gaiden series in ages and what we're faced with is a brutal rain-soaked Tokyo that's packed full of enemies to slay

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4 d. ago ‘It's about feeling like a super ninja’ – Ninja Gaiden 4 directors talk making 2025's coolest game

We speak to co-directors Masakazu Hirayama and Yuji Nakao about the challenge of reinventing the Ninja Gaiden series for a new era.

Politics

1 week ago Roy Keane slams Wales in brutal review of England defeat: 'Like a lower league team'

Manchester United legend did not hold back on Wales’ woeful display in the first half against England

Politics

2 w. ago Ghost of Yōtei review – a brutal and stunningly beautiful samurai revenge quest

PlayStation 5; Sucker Punch/SonyThe follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima leans into its young protagonist’s thirst for bloody vengeanceMy horse in Ghost of Yōtei is called Mochizuki, which means “full moon” in archaic Japanese, and I swear she is the most unfortunate creature in all of northern Japan. The button I have to press to summon her is right next to the button I need to press to heal my samurai during a fight and I often fumble with my thumb and call her straight into a chaotic seven-on-one brawl. Mochizuki frequently gallops full pelt into an arrow or catches a sword-swipe from one of my outlaw enemies as I roll out of the way. Sometimes she stands on the edge of the skirmish, calmly waiting for me to finish disembowelling bad guys so that we can resume our picturesque adventures across the region of Ezo.Ghost of Yōtei is the follow-up to American studio Sucker Punch’s reverent samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima, from 2020. Most of the time it looks exceptionally well-directe...

Politics

3 w. ago Knit’s Island review – comradeship and survival in brutal and bloody online zombie game

This inventive film, made entirely inside the multiplayer game DayZ, finds moments of community and wonder amid the zombies, factions and virtual bloodshedEvery day, tens of thousands of people roam through the dystopian universe of DayZ, a popular online game in which players strive to survive a zombie outbreak. Immersing themselves as participants and observers, film-makers Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse and Quentin L’Helgouac’h find strange beauty in this post-apocalyptic world filled with brutality and bloodshed. Their documentary is built entirely around in-game footage, interactions and POV shots, capturing a seemingly endless realm with infinite possibilities.As an open-world game, DayZ has no set objectives – apart from the obvious goal of staying alive – and players are allowed to build their own adventure, or to simply drift. Many organically form close-knit factions. The film-makers encounter one such group whose masked, gun-toting members espouse a shared philosophy of de...

Events

3 w. ago Full story of the savage Welsh sex shop murder police have never been able to solve

South Wales Police has confirmed it is carrying out a fresh forensic review of the brutal murder of Sandra Phillips after the last one in 2004 failed to find the killer

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3 w. ago Ghost of Yōtei review: Another cracking PS5 hit in brutal sword

Yōtei picks up some 300 years after the first game, Ghost of Tsushima, and developer Sucker Punch has done a wonderful job recreating the breathtaking and lawless world of ancient Japan

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