My joy at the release of Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection was matched only by my despair at the reality. The series deserved a polished, modern re-release, and yet the version we got opted for the inferior sigma versions of the previous two games, which were otherwise bare bones.

The funniest element of the master collection at launch was that we had to tinker with the game's graphics settings outside of the game itself. Sure, we've all done this sort of thing before, and it's perfectly fine for indies and the like, but Koei Tecmo wanted £33/$40 for this, and apparently it's Team Ninja's best work yet: ...... Oh come on.

At launch, the resolution had to be set in Steam properties, plus the game would launch in windowed mode and had to be made fullscreen every time. It's not the end of the world, but a poor product from a well-known studio.

Now, about a month after its release, all three games have added a graphics option to the main menu. I'm not quite sure why this wasn't the case when they were first released, but at least Team Ninja fixed it.

The new Graphics Options menu now allows you to set the display mode, resolution, and turn on/off various other options: VSync, triple buffering, anti-aliasing, depth of field, and display shadows.

However, there is much more that could be done to bring this to a sufficient level. The sigma checkpoints are terrible, and incredibly, the loading screen during battles is still the same as in the PS3 version. This would work on a toaster. I love Ninja Ryukenden, and I welcome these new features, but honestly, kudos to "V-Sync Team Ninja."