Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Mini Ninjas

1. Official Site
2. Platform: ps3
3. Publisher: Eidos Interactive
4. Developer: IO Interactive
5. Release Date: 09/08/09
6. Genre: Action/Adventure

by Mike Escobar

One of the most difficult feats in the entertainment industry is producing something that appeals to younger children as well as adults.  Pixar is the undisputed master of this, with such gems as The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc. to their credit.  Creating humor that can appeal to both age groups is hard to accomplish, but some of the most popular and enduring titles are able to pull this off seamlessly.

Well move over Pixar, because there’s a new kid in town!  They’re small, they dress all in black, and they have loads of attitude.  That’s right; I’m talking about Mini Ninjas!  Mini Ninjas introduces us to the world of Hiro, the smallest ninja on Ninja Mountain.  He’s the last person that you would think that could save the world, but when he’s the only ninja left, the ninja Master has no choice but to send out Hiro and his rotund friend Futo to rescue the rest of the ninjas and defeat the evil samurai warlord.

If you were to hear this story pitch and were told that this game was developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive, you would probably imagine a game along the lines of the Ninja Gaiden series, with lush graphics and tons of over the top violence.  After all, Eidos is the company that brought us such titles as the Hitman trilogy, Kane and Lynch, and Age of Conan.  Not the most family friendly of games to be sure.  Mini Ninjas is a change of pace; believe it or not this game is rated E10+ by the ESRB!

In what the developer admits is a “quirky graphical style”, the world of Mini Ninjas is beautifully displayed in a somewhat cartoony fashion, with plenty of bright vibrant color making up the landscape and the characters in it.  The attention to detail is fantastic – when out on the plains, the tall grass waves as the wind blows.  As Hiro is hiding around the corner from enemies, he brandishes his sword menacingly.  The world is constantly in motion around you, even to the point where you can see koi swimming under water as you float down the river.  Your enemies, the evil samurai, are all modeled in a sort of medieval ronin style, giving them a comical look and making the game more kid friendly.

All the sound work is so well done; it’s difficult to know where to start praising it.  Environmental sound is excellent across the board, with all the levels having their own distinctive sound style.  The first time you’re floating down the river and hear the roar of the rapids growing louder as you head downstream will send a chill down your spine.  In the forest levels you hear the ambient sound of the creatures of the forest, and in the flooded level you constantly hear the flow and drip of water everywhere you go.

Music on each of the levels fits right in to the theme of the game.  The forest levels use a type of Japanese flute music that is very pastoral and peaceful.  Once combat is engaged, the music changes to more of a war-like drumbeat, matching the action on-screen perfectly.

The voice work is where this game truly shines.  Every single actor that provided voice work for this title should be commended, as well as the approach and attention to detail that IO Interactive took.  While many companies would go with the one generic voice for all game vendors, one voice for any quest givers, etc. Mini Ninjas actually has all these characters voiced by different people.  So when you have one shopkeeper tell you to go visit his brother on the mountain and you finally find the brother he actually sounds like a different person.  This may seem like a minor item, but it really gives the game a much richer feel. 

The best part is the voices of your enemies.  While the evil samurai warlord is suitably gruff and dark-sounding, it’s his vast array of minions that will capture your attention the most.  As soon as any of the samurai spot you approaching, they’ll turn and jump with a cry of “Mini mini Ninjas!!!” and rush at you.  Believe me when I say this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard in a video game.  Several fellow gamers, all with different gaming backgrounds and differing tastes in video games could not stop laughing and talking about this once they had seen it.  If you use stealth and sneak up on the samurai, you can actually see them marching in patrols (all out of step, which makes it even funnier) chanting "Ninja! Ninja! Ninja!"  You’ll even see the samurai leaders yell and bully the smaller ones if you watch long enough.

The control scheme for Mini Ninjas is very nicely laid out.  The default button assignments are ones that every player should be used to – X to jump, Square for normal attack, Triangle for strong/special attack, and hold Circle to sprint.  Selecting your spells and selecting which ninja you will play is handled in an ingenious way – holding down the L1 button will bring up the ‘Ninja Followers Wheel’ which allows you to select which ninja you will play.  At the start of the game you will only have Hiro and Futo to choose between, but before you know it you’ll be rescuing your other ninja friends and you’ll be able to choose any one of the six characters to play.  Best of all, the character switching can be done at any time during gameplay and is not limited to happening merely between levels.  You can switch ninjas mid-fight if you think a different ninja can handle the current battle more effectively! 

Each of your ninja friends have different strengths and different fighting style that is more effective against particular enemies.  This insures that you just won’t play Hiro through the entire game, but use a different ninja as the situation warrants.  Holding down the R1 button brings up the inventory wheel, where you can select one of your spells or an item in your inventory and assign it to your R2 button.  The selected item will show up in the lower right part of your main game screen and any time you want to use that item or spell just tap the R2 button.  As with most any game these days the controls are completely customizable, but the default layout is easy to get used to and works very well.

The tutorial level for Mini Ninjas takes place on Ninja Mountain, where you have to visit the different masters and perform tasks that introduce you to the combat and general gameplay of the title.  The game does an excellent job of keeping the tutorial moving along, with plenty of variety in your tasks.  Too many games have training levels that move too slowly or last too long, Mini Ninjas does not have that issue at all.  One of your first tasks is to retrieve your friend Futo, who is supposed to be training with you.  Unfortunately, Futo likes to eat more than train, so you just follow the trail of apple cores to find your friend (at least he’s eating lots of fruit!)  Along the way you’ll learn how to rotate the camera, wall run, and even shake the fruit out of trees to restore your health.  This brings up yet another of the nice innovations that Mini Ninjas has going for it – the use of the motion controls in the Sixaxis controller.  Fighting all those evil samurai can be dangerous and you’re bound to lose some health.  One of your options to restore your lost energy is to eat fruit.  Just find an apple tree or berry bush, walk up to it, hold down the X button and shake your controller like crazy!  Motion controls are used in a variety of ways throughout the game, such as controlling your ninja as you sled down the mountain level trying to outrun an avalanche, and also freeing yourself from the evil monk’s possession power.  Best of all, none of these things are overused.  You see them often enough to enjoy, but it’s not a so frequent that it becomes an annoyance.

The story line of Mini Ninjas is what really makes this game so charming.  As previously stated, you’re the smallest and least experienced of the ninjas on Ninja Mountain.  After nearly all your friends have been sent off to investigate the strange happenings in the world, it is now up to you to venture forth, rescue your friends, and defeat the warlord.  When you leave the mountain, you quickly discover that the warlord is using his evil powers to transform the creatures of the forest into his evil minions.  After they’re defeated, they change back into cute and cuddly little woodland creatures, so parents don’t need to worry that the game is having their children “kill” the samurais.  This is an ingenious twist that works very well in the story.  The bigger the animal that was transformed, the more dangerous they are as a samurai.  Samurai leaders turn back into bears and boars, while the smaller samurai become wolves, foxes, and frogs.

Once out in the world, Hiro and his fellow ninja Futo begin their adventure in earnest.  The level design in Mini Ninjas is fairly open, with pretty much every level having at least two different paths to reach your next objective.  In each level you can check your progress, seeing exactly how many animals there are to rescue, how many flowers there are to gather, and how many kuji shrines there are to discover.  This feature keeps you from wandering each level long after you’ve found everything, wondering if there is still something left.

As you reach the village at the base of the mountain you are confronted with your first quest giver that asks you to defend the village from the samurai on the other side of the river.  Heading towards your first battle you are treated to one of your first in-game cutscenes showing the samurai threatening the village.  These little vignettes are always worth a chuckle and usually show off the incompetence of your enemy, all in good fun.

Continuing on after you defeat the samurai at the village, you meet your second quest giver that explains to you about brewing your own potions, and that you can collect flowers hidden around each level as the components for these potions.  This is where the more experienced gamers will find a little more of a challenge in the gameplay, because quite often these flowers are hidden in out of the way places that take a bit of effort to track down. 

You are also introduced to another kind of flower, the Anemone, which is used in a very special way.  Kuji shrines are hidden throughout the land, and if you bring an Anemone flower to a kuji shrine and meditate, you will be granted a new spell.  Hiro is the only one of the ninjas that can use kuji magic, a special ninja power that allows Hiro to throw fireballs, summon lightning, slow time, and even possess animals!  In yet another great gameplay twist, Hiro can possess the form of nearby animals, giving him a variety of different abilities.  The smaller animals, like the rabbit, are able to sense flowers from a distance, making them easier to find.  The larger animals, like the bear, have stronger attacks and can be used to fight the samurai.  While it is more effective to fight as a ninja, there are a few achievements that are tied to eliminating a certain number of enemies while in the different animal forms, so there’s also that motivation to play as an animal.

The early levels of the game are pretty straightforward and it’s nearly impossible to get lost, but some of the later levels get fairly large and complex.  To make sure you can’t get lost, any of the ninjas can stop and meditate by pressing up on the d-pad.  This will bring up a floating arrow pointing you towards your next objective, along with a short description of what you need to do next, like “Rescue Suzume from the Samurai”.  Most gamers won’t need to take advantage of this, but it’s nice to be available if you need it.  On a side note, as you rescue each of your ninja friends you unlock the cutscene of how each of the friends came to ninja mountain.  These are all viewable from the main menu and are all hysterical, make sure to check them out!

Each section of the game ends with a boss fight where you have to defeat some gigantic incompetent samurai (as opposed to the normal-sized incompetent samurai you’ve been fighting all along).  These fights are very creatively set up, challenging the gamer to find out what each boss’ weakness is.  Once you have discovered this weakness, you go through the ubiquitous quick time event to do a huge amount of damage to the boss.  As each boss takes more damage, their attacks change, either coming at you faster or changing entirely.  While this may sound difficult, the bosses aren’t that much of a challenge, even for the younger gamers.  After defeating each boss you are shown a cutscene with the samurai reporting their failure to the warlord and the warlord punishing his minions.  Once again, these cutscenes are all quite funny and make the boss fights that much more worthwhile.

The replay value is the one area where Mini Ninjas falls short.  As in, “wow this game is short”.  Your first time through the game, including the tutorial level and getting comfortable with the game should take you about 15 hours or so.  A second run through to get the remaining trophies (assuming you played on easy or medium the first time) can be done in about 12 hours or so.  After that time you should have 100% of the trophies (or be darn close) and have unlocked all the game content.  Since there is no multiplayer content, you’ve pretty much seen all that this title has to offer.  This is unfortunate, because this is one of those rare game environments that you just can’t get enough of.  We can only hope that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of these undersized assassins!

Lack of replay value aside, this is a game that you absolutely should not miss.  Whether you’re a parent who is looking for a game that you can play with your younger children and still enjoy yourself, or just someone looking for a little ninja zaniness, you can’t go wrong with Mini Ninjas.  The unique game environment, the phenomenal voice work, and the engaging story line all come together beautifully and make for a very special game experience.

Gaming Trend Score

91

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 100
3. Controls: 95
4. Gameplay: 95
5. Value/Replay: 65
6. OVERALL:91