Mini ninjas review

Posted by Themaddhatter in Console, Microsoft, Nintendo, Portable, Reviews, Sony | 3 comments

Mini ninjas, a game that makes you the cutest little underhand death dealer ever . I gotta admit i didnt really have high hopes for this game but gave it a try anyway.so lets go with a little background first.you are hiro (tough naming task there), a small ninja who must defend the local people by stopping evil samurai from, presumably, killing them all.You begin the game with a basic background, being told of impending doom and that its all coming from the nearby abandoned castle thats meant to be uninhabited,lets just let that one go.

To get through the game you’re given an arsenal of typical ninja weapons,swords, shurikens and the like.And now for the plot twist,these aren’t just any evil samurai warriors, they’re the insanely cute transformed forest creatures. This brings in another gameplay aspect.Through the powers of ninja magic, you can become the animals.Yes you too can be a ninja rabbit,panda,boar,frog,chicken and many more.The samurai themselves are fun to beat up but you’re left with a little guilt. They do all look like four year olds after all. The enemies vary from normal mini foot soldiers to captains to massive club weilding behemoths, the latter requiring a transformation into another character. This is done through a quick menu click using the left shoulder buttons.There are two of these characters available in the demo, each having their own strengths and weaknesses and of course being immensely cute.

So moving on to controls. Mini ninjas is very well named in that the basic controls are all the same as ryu hyabusa (ninja gaiden series).The enemies attack in swarms and quick mashing of both attack (x) and jump (a) causes hiro to dive around vanquishing them all.you can be calculated about these attacks and avoid button bashing but either way seems to work. Add to these controls the use of shuriken to daze enemies and fireballs to obliterate them in groups.of course battle can be avoided by taking on the likeness of a bear and decimating the samurai with one sweep of claw. This is usually a better idea in that, at first the samurais’ whooping noises are kind of funny,but soon grow very tedious. At least the noise changes with each different class of samurai. The life system is most easily described as the zelda system.Starting with three hearts you can refill using health potions and freshly caught sushi (something you have to catch yourself).

Mini ninjas is a decent game. The controls and movements of your character are a strange hybrid of ryu and link(zelda again).The levels are all platform based with you climbing rocks by flipping back and forth and using long grass to your advantage.There are also some side parts which require the player to fish or row a boat or even pick flowers!

The graphics while looking like something from hello kitty,are very good,shown off most by the shade under trees and bridges and the contrasting bright sunny environments. The trees, animals and statues bring life to the levels. Even the swaying of the grass add to a level that would be at home in any generic platformer had they not been present. There is a definite vibe from this game that its meant for younger gamers too,most evident by the fact that you can call “upon the gods” to show a directional arrow,telling you where to go next.

So all in all i’d say mini ninjas is a fairly fun game, bringing to the table a few new ideas and definitely a good sense of humour.The downside though is that without the cutesy graphics, this would just be a fairly run of the mill platformer, not to mention that adding ninjas to a game seems to be a stable for selling pretty terrible games.Mini ninjas has a good set of controls,easy to pick up. Its fun to play with the animals (did i just say that?) but sadly i dont see this being a game with replay value,or for that sake a game where you wouldnt complain about monotony too much a lot like ninja gaiden.

So here goes: I give it 3/5. Great ideas, but not enough innovation in an over saturated genre. Add to that the pure rage i could see those samurai bringing out in me after at most an hour of listening to their “whoops”, like those bloody devils in the windwaker…

Mini Ninjas is a game developed by IO interactive and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released on September 8, 2009 in North America and September 11, 2009 for Europe, for PS3, XBox 360, Microsoft Windows, Wii, and Nintendo DS

Yes i meant these things