Ninjas are pretty cool. They have cool weapons, and can shoot fireballs and run up walls, like the Matrix. Counting out the stupid ninjas from Naruto, they are pretty much cool. Though personally, I like pirates. Though we aren’t really talking about pirates here, we are talking about ninjas. Besides Ninja Gaiden and the Shinobi games for the Genesis, there hasn’t really been a good series of ninja games. Though there have been a lot of ninja-like games, for example, I-Ninja for the Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox. I played the Gamecube version, but I think they are basically the same. So, is this ninja as stealthy as he could be? Or is he just as visible as Kanye West’s large ego?
The story is that the main character named Ninja is on a mission to rescue his sensei named Sensei, who has been kidnapped by the evil O-dor. During this process, however, Ninja absorbed the power of a rage stone and goes on a blind rage and accidentally takes out his master by taking off his head. He doesn’t remember this however, and when he wakes up, he goes off on to take revenge to take down O-dor and his evil ninja army. So, yeah, basic ninja revenge story. It’s nothing new, but it’s nothing special. I will explain near the end of this review why I say that.
The game play is in the form of a hack-and-slash plat-forming game, where you control ninja, and go through a couple hub worlds with about 5 or 6 levels each. There are also different missions in each level, and you can go through them again to get that mission done. Your basic form of attack is your katana. You slash and dice up enemy robot ninjas. There are also secondary weapons, like shurikens, blow darts, and a grappling hook. Some of the missions in the game consist of you either rolling a barrel to the end of the level or just getting from point A to point B. Of course, in each hub world there is a boss fight which ranges from taking control of a giant robot to attacking another robot, kind of like the boss fights from Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, to boss fights that look like prototype boss fights for Starfox. The basic goal in each hub world is to get a rage stone and then move onto the next hub world.
The graphics in the game are okay. They get the job done, but they could have done better for each of the consoles it was on. The music is also fitting since it feels like you’re in a cheesy ninja movie. The voice acting is good enough, but it’s just like watching a cheesy ninja movie with bad voice-overs. It’s really hard to say something good about this game, so I’m going to move onto the bad parts of the game.
Like I said above, let’s get into the bad parts, and boy, is there a lot of bad things about it. The missions and game play gets super repetitive. It also gets super boring since you have no cool moves to show off. Ninja just slashes his sword wildly, looking like a ten year old that ate two bags of sugar. You also can’t keep your projectiles, which annoys the heck out of me since you get to keep all your weapons in Ninja Gaiden. The music is cheesy and just downright terrible. From what I can see, they didn’t have a big budget for this game. There is even a cheat code that can make you finish the level without doing anything. It just makes this game ever shorter and more boring. The game as a whole is just terrible. They should have made some modifications to the game, like more weapons, more enemies, more moves, and just a better game overall. Speaking of enemy variety, there isn’t much of one. There are just robot ninjas and that’s it. The biggest gripe I have is that your sword, when it upgrades, doesn’t do anything! It just looks different and that’s it.
All and all, this is just a terrible game. I wouldn’t recommend picking this one up for any reason. I mean, I kind of expected this from the people who made this, Argonaut Games. Admittedly, they did make some good games like King Arthur’s World and Buck Bumble. I would say stay away from this game. No wonder Argonaut Games went out of business. It’s maybe because they can’t make a decent game anymore. At least, Mini Ninjas will be better
This game gets a 3 out of 10.
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