I wonder if in a few years people will talk about consolidating iOS games. If they did, would they use the term in a good way or would it still have the derogatory connotation attached to it now? Whatever the case, we have one of our first real case studies in Halfbrick Studios Fruit Ninja Kinect, the popular IOS game that has been adapted for Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor. It’s an odd choice for Summer of Arcade and people might wonder why they would pay for a game that they can already get on their phones, but the most surprising thing is that it’s actually a great showcase for the Kinect and hopefully a model that they can. . learn to move on.
Ten times the fun?
Fruit Ninja is a game for mobile devices in which you use your fingers or thumbs to cut fruit. You may need to avoid the bombs mixed with the pineapple and papaya or you may be tasked with getting as high a score as possible in a short time limit, but for the most part that’s really the whole game. The fruit rises and must be cut before it falls. It’s a simple game, but its 99-cent price tag is more than earned. However, Fruit Ninja Kinect does not cost 99 cents, it is 800 MS points ($ 10) and that will be a difficult thing for many people to ignore. I can’t really justify a game that costs ten times the price on a platform when you add very little. Fruit Ninja Kinect adds something, but not necessarily enough. The good news is that it is still a very addictive and fun game.
When you start a round of Fruit Ninja, you will see an outline of yourself in a background. At first I thought this was just a cute way to try and implement Kinect, but quickly realized that it is also the most important part of gaming feedback for the player. When he swings his arms or kicks his feet, little slashes run the length of the screen where his limbs are in shadow, and whenever there is fruit in the way, they will split into a gloriously squishy shape. Your shadow tells you where you are and how you align with the objects on the screen. It’s a really smart design choice because it eliminates the lack of spatial awareness that many other motion control games are guilty of. While it is not a form of true tactile feedback, it does go a long way in making you feel like you are always able to slice every fruit on the screen and never fall victim to a scary sensor.
Gamers will surely want to know if the Kinect works as it should or if it cuts out. The answer is really strange. During my time with the game, I never encountered a single problem with the Kinect not registering an arm or foot strike. Outside of the game is a completely different matter. Menu navigation is done by cutting out the names of the modes that surround a stationary fruit on the screen. You still see the same type of shadow that you would see in the game, but for whatever reason, it is often interrupted, and when it comes back, it takes time to calibrate. It’s shocking how often this happens and is sure to give people a very bad impression from the start. I hope Halfbrick Studios will release a patch to fix this issue because once you access the menus the game works great.
Anyone familiar with the series will already know that it’s not just about slicing a couple of fruits and seeing how they add up the points. High scores depend on your ability to split multiple fruits at once, awarding additional combo points for any hits that connect with three or more fruits and the occasional critical hit. If you’re hoping to get anywhere in classic mode, you’ll need to make the most of these combos. There are also three strict strikes and you are off the scoreboard ending the round if you let three fruits fall unscathed. Along with the fact that there is an instant round if a bomb is cut, the three fruit penalty makes this the hardest mode of all.
On the other hand, Arcade mode is much more hectic but puts a time limit on things. Here will be a special fruit that you can cut and that will fall or fly across the screen. If you manage to cut one of them in the short time that they pass, you will receive a power-up. These include things like Freeze that slows things down, Frenzy that fills the screen with a ton of fruit at a time, and Double Points that gives you, well, double points. To get to the top of the leaderboards in Arcade mode, you’ll need to master both combos and power-ups, doing your best to match all three at once.
Rounding out the single player mode is Zen Mode and Challenge Mode. Both are not spectacular. Zen mode removes power-ups and bombs and gives you more time to play (but not much more), but I think it would have been better if it was an endless mode without the three-hit rule. The challenge mode is the same as the rest, but with specific objectives in mind. So you may have to score 150 points in Classic or 300 in Arcade, but the rules for those modes apply the same way. It’s not worth calling a mode and I think they would have been better if they just worked out the unlock system or even added a leveling system to the game.
My shadow cuts better than your shadow
You’ll unlock a few things as you go, but they’re not too noteworthy either. You can change the design of your shadow or alter the color of your blade so that your strokes do different things. I guess it’s not something worth being critical about, but it seems like this doesn’t go far enough to justify the game’s higher price. I would have liked to see some crossover promotion with other titles so that you could change your shadow into other characters, maybe, or even change the sword into something ridiculous or fun.
The biggest addition to the game, by far, is the party mode that allows two players to play at the same time. Players play on their own half of the screen at the same time and compete for the best score. To keep things clear, each player has their own color. Still, things get really hectic with both people waving their arms and I definitely had a few times where I accidentally hit my better half in the face. She also managed to hit me a couple of times, decidedly less on purpose. It goes without saying that (safety issues aside) this is the perfect mode for anyone with children looking for a game to play together.
It’s hard to rate Fruit Ninja Kinect without taking into account the importance players place on cost. This game can be purchased by many people at one-tenth the cost of this console version. But with that said, this is hands down the best version of Fruit Ninja. It plays spectacularly well on the Kinect while retaining the same short burst, ranked hunt, addictive gameplay, and adds immensely fun multiplayer. But it’s still a minigame that you can’t play for more than thirty minutes to an hour at a time and no matter how many times you come back, there is no real way of progression. Fruit Ninja Kinect is probably best summed up by the phrase “what you see is what you get.” What you see is incredibly shallow and limited, but what you get is a lot of fun.
Final score: 70%
70-74% – “Strong” The upper echelon of average, this game has enough technical prowess and / or fun, but lacks the depth or polish to stand out. Some will swear that it is the best, others will say otherwise. Most of us will be perfectly satisfied with that.
