I haven't had nearly the time I'd like to play around with Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360. I know, sacrilege, you'd think I'd be spending all of my waking moments on the game sense they sent me the early build to check out.

I did spend enough time to make my way through the first chapter, so I at least got a taste for controls and gameplay. First things first though, the build I was sent an early build, the cut scenes were only about 70 percent complete, and the game has yet to be fully optimized, so I'm going to ignore some of the technical glitches that popped up with my time during the game. The game also didn't include the ability to level up weapons.

In Ninja Gaiden II, an Xbox 360 exclusive, Ryu Hayabusa is out to once more save his clan and the human race. The game is built on a new game engine crated by Team NINJA and Tomonobu Itagaki and features a new auto-health system and the ability to save clips of your favorite battles to share them on Xbox Live.

The game's opening chapter takes place Tokyo's Sky City and has Ryu working his way around and through high-rises as he takes on a slew of ninja.

The combat system used in the game is surprisingly complex. It seems, at first blush, to be all about button mashing, but it didn't take me long to realize that button mashing just leads to having your katana handed to you. Instead you have to keep a careful eye on the timing of your attacks, something easier said than done in the game since most attacks come in waves. If you're not careful you'll be quickly dragged down and stabbed, beaten, or kicked repeatedly.

To make matters worse, some pretty brutal attacks, like say completely slicing off an enemies arm or leg, don't make the opponent less dangerous. My first time with the game ended abruptly, when a legless ninja, who I assumed was dead, grabbed my legs, dragged his bleeding body on top of mind and stabbed me in the chest until I was dead.

Worse still are the guys with missing arms, who will stand in the background zinging shuriken at you as you try to deal with the flood of more able bodied ninja trying to overwhelm you.

I discovered pretty quickly that you can dispatch these dismembered ninja quickly and colorfully with a single button tap if you time it right. And the graphics for these quick kills are amazing, typically ending in lots of overkill that involves both a gutting and a beheading. Oh, did I mention the blood? The blood does not disappoint, whether it's arterial blood spurting from a recently severed arm or the splash of blood that spatters a window during a beheading.

Once you get past all of that blood and the fact that cutting off an arm or a leg doesn't necessarily mean you've dispatched a ninja, the game has a fairly smooth adjustment period. You have to move around a lot, back up a lot, time things well, to make it through the flood of bad guys. Overtime i came to realize that the game has its own timing, its own pace that isn't as frenetic as the onslaught might initially have you believe. In fact it's quite a bit slower. There's just no room for mistakes.

Now I was playing it through on what I suspect will be the medium setting, the hardest one you can choose on your first time with the game. I ended up having to redo different areas many times before I could survive, but my survival typically came because I played better, not because I mashed buttons faster.

The first chapter ending up taking me about 45 minutes to play through, in, in-game time, according to the chapter-end summary. It included a nice variety of settings and a couple of interesting enemy types, wrapping up with a boss battle that was just brutal. I don't want to spoil anything, but it was one of those battles that is completely unforgiving. One mistake and you're toast, OK maybe you can make three, but very little margin for error.

Even with the boss battle, though, I felt I finally succeeded because I was playing better, not because I got lucky. I like that in a game.

Ninja Gaiden II's first chapter was fun, it wasn't the sort of game that had me up all hours thirsting to play more, but I can tell that it's the sort of game that will slowly sink its hooks into, gradually upping the play until you can't put it down.

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The bolded part was my doing as I just thought it was hilarious.  Can't wait for this game.