Ninja Warrior

Ninja Warrior casts you as a legendary ninja and gives you two kinds of work: rescuing hostages and penetrating enemy territory to take out what is there. The game builds itself on the traditional idea of the ninja as someone whose abilities are trained over years rather than granted — excellent acrobatics and deadly close-quarters strikes are the tools you are given, and the levels are laid out to make you use both. Movement and combat are meant to flow into each other, so getting through a defended area is as much about how you cross it as about what you fight on the way. It is a straightforward action premise executed with a clear sense of its own genre.