Okay well today’s review is on a game called Ninja Guardian by Phoenix Game Studios. Attack an evil samurai warlord named… you guessed it “Evil Samurai Warlord”. Anyways the object is for you to stop him by jumping on platforms and fighting like giant wasps and stuff. I kid you not! The unique thing about it is simply that you move from platform to platform. To attack it’s the A button. If you want to jump in mid-air it’s the right trigger. You can also trigger temporary invincibility by the left trigger. That’s pretty much it. It makes it rather unique because the goal is simply to get to the top of the level. The graphics are cute and resemble some sort of Asian paper artwork, although it reminds me of Chinese art rather than Japanese, but I suppose Japanese must have had their art as well so I guess it doesn’t really matter. In any case I think it’s worth a play just because it’s kind of unique (and frustrating). In any case if you want to go into why I think it’s worth a play read on.
Somehow Ninja and Guardian don’t seem to go well together. They were assassins originally, just ask Wikipedia! Not only that but we have a ENVIROMENTAL ninja guardian. Apparently an evil samurai warlord is polluting the earth by spraying aerosol cans into the atmosphere and causing global warming! Oh Noes! Actually it sounds as if everything is backward, if I remember correctly Samurai were honorable. It’s possible samurai weren’t that honorable either, but I won’t go into that. But putting an environmental slant to a ninja-themed-game is just too wacky for words. But I’ll try.
They start off on the right foot, you get a “tutorial” where it teaches you what the controls are. After a brief intro that shows said polluting Samurai warlord, then it begins. Left thumbstick moves. A) will attack, right trigger jumps in air (or double jumps), left trigger does the shruiken protection mode, or essentially being invincible. Well I guess we covered this in the opening paragraph. Essentially the interface is quite easy to use as there’s not a lot of controls to confuse you.
Graphics, as I said above, are like ancient Asian art, as the artwork has a textured paper look. The actual character and intro graphics are quite amateur and childish looking though, however it doesn’t really detract from the gameplay. Sound effects are average, and music is nice although it’s the same tune through the whole trial time. There maybe other music during the course of the game but I didn’t hear them
It’s main strength lies in it’s somewhat unique gameplay. You’re basically bouncing off of “platforms” which tend to fall when you touch them so that you have to be good enough to hit another platform or you’ve lost the level pretty much. That said it’s also sort of it’s problem, you can get so high and then have no other platforms below you so you end up waiting while the ninja guardian falls to his death.
Well I think you should give it a play because it is somewhat fun even though it’s also somewhat frustrating. The price is pretty low at 240 Microsoft points, or about 3 bucks. You have to give the creators points for trying and considering there isn’t a lot of really great games for Xbox Live Indie Games. (There are some really good ones but not a lot).
Name: Ninja Guardian
Developer: Phoenix Game Studios
Price: 240 MSP (about $3.00 USD)
Where you can get it: Xbox Live Indie Games on the Xbox 360
Tags: independent, Platformer, reviews, scrolling, Uhfgood, xblig, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, xbox live community games, xbox live indie games