Title: Ten Second Ninja X

Platform: Xbox One|PC|PS VITA|PS4 (reviewed)

Developer: Four Circle Interactive

Publisher: Curve Digital

Release date: July 19th

tl;dr: Beat the levels with timing and precision to score those three shiny stars!

Price: £8 / $10 / €10

Family Focus: Click here for more information.



Upon playing the first half hour of 10 Second Ninja X, my first thoughts were “This game can go throw itself in front of a speeding commuter train.”

10 Second Ninja X gives you hundred levels to complete within 10 seconds, giving you hours of gameplay to flip, slash, and shuriken your way through. But it’ll take longer than that – you’ll spend most of your time furiously shaking your fist at that one star rank and Four Circle Interactive’s frustrating level design.

The purpose behind 10 Second Ninja X is that each level gives you just 10 seconds to kill everything and reach the exit. Practice, precision, and patience are paramount, especially the latter. A three star system akin to Angry Birds, keeps later levels locked behind a skill wall that becomes harder and harder to surmount. Finishing levels isn’t enough; you’ll often need to go back and better your initial time to push on through the game.

10 Second Ninja X has an easily grasped control system which makes the game feel easy, but the scoring system is anything but. As your little ninja self, you must jump, slash and throw shurikens to tackle your way through all the bots that stand between you and that pesky star ranking. There’s also the evil Nazi pirate villain guy, who must have attended the same educational facility as Dr. Eggman, since he also likes cramming like cute animals into bots.

Everything about 10 Second Ninja X is cute and colourful, from enemy design to the levels you play on. Even when the difficulty gets too much, the atmosphere of the game just soaks away the anger and pushes you further to get past those thumb shattering levels that push you to your very limit.

Throughout this review I have complained about the over bearing difficulty in the game but haven’t really explained myself. The difficulty in the game comes how irritatingly tight the time frames for the three star ranking is. Pride aside you could easily just clear the level and achieve a one star rank but eventually you will have to go back and achieve a higher rank in order to unlock more levels which in turn puts of players who aren’t accustomed to these style of games.

10 Second Ninja X is an addictive action platformer that is perfect for wasting time like that bus that just never turns up, making it more suitable for the handheld medium more than the home console. Overall, it’s a perfect little game for anyone to try. Even if the difficulty gets a little steep at times during the later levels, don’t let that put you off.

The Good Colourful environments

Variety of levels

Perfect time waster for on the go

The Bad Star ranking system prevents steady progression

Frustrating level design

Family Focus

Cartoon violence like exploding robots and the use of ninja weaponry but nothing too violent for the younger audience.

Disclaimer: This review is based on digital code for PlayStation 4. The code was supplied by the developer for review purposes.

Share this! Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Email

Reddit

Pinterest



Like this: Like Loading...