S&S Indie Review: Little Ninjas

S&S Reviews-Little Ninjas by Blanc Game Studio

XBLIG- Justin Foster

Released 7/11/12

80ms points

Rating Based on Community   Violence 2/3   Sex 0/3    Mature Content 0/3

            

 Hey everyone, hope everyone has found a few good games to pick up during the summer gaming drought.  Before I dive into my review I would like to recommend everyone check out Steam summer sales.  There are some decent deals up there and every day has some new deals, in addition every eight hours they have a spotlight deal that the community votes on.  Hopefully that will make summer gaming more enjoyable. That being said let’s take a look at Little Ninjas which is categorized as a Platformer.  This is one of the indie games that have a good core game play that I think that most people would enjoy. In general I try to aim myself towards the Indie games that I feel like have the most appealing core game play.  While this game has that it is also an example of a game that falls apart because of the little details.

               

  So I think the best way I can really explain this game and the experience you will have is by explaining the roller coaster of emotional stages I went through while playing the game.  When you boot up Little Ninjas you are greeted by a sweet ballad played on the piano.  Enjoyable of course, but I felt confused because when I think of ninjas fighting in arcade style I don’t think ballad.  Afterwards I jumped into the tutorial to make sure I got a good understanding of the controls before making any decisions on whether the game is good or bad.  After playing the tutorial I was really hopeful that maybe this game would make up for its silly depressing opening with a good core.  The game explained that its multiplayer (which seems to be the main focus) contains 4 players that can brawl it out.  There can be teams and there can also be AI added in case you don’t have any friends (I had to add AI). Also there is a co-op invasion mode where you fight smaller ninjas.  The combat is well thought out though.  There are different classes of ninjas that have different skills.  In addition to skills you gain experience after completing an objective which unlocks an ability you can use to hurt your opponents.  The controls are well mapped out and the combat feels fluid.  I was pretty happy when I start playing a match because the game play felt natural, but it would all be ripped away.  In each of the game types I had fun playing, but I don’t know why I am playing.  Allow me to explain, Death match says that I gain experience for killing my opponent.  I understand this, but it doesn’t say how I win the game.  In fact I played each of these game types and with the exception of elimination mode I didn’t know who was winning, what the score was, or how much time was left in the round.  There is no scoreboard and even if there was, the game never explains what is it that I do that scores me a point.  After a 10 min kill fest a little text box will show up on screen saying Player 1(or whoever won) has won the game and it takes you back to the menu a few seconds later.   Again at the end there is no score or anything, and it rushes you out of the game.  You play for a while and then it’s over with nothing to show for your efforts. 

  Everything I have said about this game would probably lead you all away from this game and it’s not my intention.  If you like to play brawl style games and like to play with your buddies locally than this is worth the buy because at the price it is a fair game.  Those who usually don’t play a ton of local multiplayer might want to sleep on it before you make the buy.  The game has good mechanics but suffers from little details that when all put together make the game seem unappealing.  I truly believe if the game explained the match types and had a scoreboard it would be a very high rated game unfortunately without it I don’t see it having too much success.

S&S Rating: 4/10

Email:Soulo316@yahoo.com