With games becoming more and more tuned to be interactive movies, the demand for engaging storytelling has risen. Gone are the days when simple plots like “the princess was just abducted by that giant lizard thing!” were sufficient for setting the stage for gameplay.

Stuff like Uncharted and God of War and Fable 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed have scored well on the tale-o-meter, but what are the truly head-scratching narratives that nuke your cerebrum just trying to untangle the plot?

Dave:  It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but Holy Crap did Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox feature a cluster@#$% of a story.

Let’s see, before humans there were these demon things called fiends, but there were also greater fiends and a ninja clan made a powerful sword and someone else make a powerful sword and now the emperor of a futuristic city that uses blimps wants to take over the world using this sword and the fiends are going crazy killing people in a nightclub and it’s up to you, a super ninja with demon blood in him to team up with a blond dominatrix with giant boobs wearing the least supportive leather undergarment ever created by man, to save the world.  Is that about right?

"Why am I doing this again? Ah, nevermind. Stabbing!!!"

Thankfully the gameplay was some of the tightest around and the action was superior because if Ninja Gaiden had to be remembered for its storytelling flair then it would be used forevermore in middle school writing classes as an example of how not to form a coherent creative thought.

I especially loved the unending amount of text the player could choose to read for a clearer background on the game’s convoluted history.

Itagaki:  “Hey intern.  Your assignment is to develop a mythology for this game.  Here’s a pen and paper and some PCP.   Have at it! ”

Jon: The Ninja Gaiden case is an especially sad one, because that series was one of the first examples in the 8-bit era where a game could have an engaging storyline.  Too bad Itagaki is such a douchebag.

"That pilot!! It's...DIINGOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!"

This one here is a heavy choice for me, because I loved the game so much.  I braved a North Atlantic blizzard after my place of work had shut down due to weather, and instead of taking the quickest,  most direct route home; I chose to stray to a local video game store and pay $79.99 CAD for Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner.  Lightning paced mecha battles combined with Hideo Kojima’s knack for the cinematic?  Sign me up.  Unfortunately the game’s storyline, while nothing overly complex as a whole, pulls an Akira in the final act of the game and rockets off the rails on the WTF train.  The dialogue is brain numbingly frustrating to listen to at this point, with a protaganist named Dingo Egrett, and a love interest with a J-Lo ass and the unfortunate monicker “Ken Marinaris” (Jesus Hideo…just…just stop…) waxing poetically about Metatrons and Aumaans and how the universe is willing its own destiny.

All of this is of course made better when Dingo pulls an ending out of the Michael Bay playbook and explodes the hell out of villainous terrorist organization BAHRAM’s interdimensional battle station following one of the fiercest last boss encounters this gamer can recall.