Ninja Must Die

High paced side scroller that scratches that itch of combat, pace and visuals. Has enough variable missions to keep it from feeling too repetitive and is fairly intuitive on requirements for advancement so it feels like there is perpetual progress. Have only been playing for a couple of weeks so the inevitable price gauging is impending but so far, it doesn’t feel as blatant as other games. The art and design is excellent and they have seemed to navigate the difficulty of creating a world that feels accessible to a wide range of demographics. My one suggestion, which perhaps will be remedied with further progress so I acknowledge that I might be jumping the gun or…sword if you will, would be a more impressive and graphically vibrant display when activating the large attack. Again, this could change with further progress so maybe look at it as a caveat. Overall, a fun and thoughtfully constructed game that you’ll happily devote large sums of time that should probably be spent on more meaningful endeavors. All while sacrificing productivity at the altar of guilty pleasures. Hurts so good.

I’m not joking. It looks simple, but like old arcade games it is much harder than it looks. It’s also difficult for the same reason - to get you to spend more money. Make no mistake, this app is made with the mobile dev toolkit and has all the same monetization strategies that plague modern games, but it’s not obnoxious about it and if you ignore/guard yourself against said strategies there is a solid game underneath that is definitely worth paying money for. For example, jade is the premium currency, but they give you a ridiculous amount of it just for logging on so I have far more of it than I’d need for anything I’d like to spend it on. Fortunately the game has plenty of cosmetic options so you can pay for it the honest way instead of paying for an advantage. The one thing that’s keeping me from giving it five stars is the fact boss battles in it are timed, so they may be impossible to win without upgrading your ninja until it does enough damage, which is what pushes it into pay to win territory since there is only so much upgrading that can be done a day without spending money. So far I haven’t gotten to point where I’ve actually been held back by a lack of upgrades rather than skill since in the couple of cases where my attack was too low I’ve always been able to upgrade myself just using the materials gotten from playing, and I can identify other skills walls which I could get past if I was just better at reacting to the patterns. Still, the potential is clearly there in the game design, so I’d say to approach the game with caution despite its genuine quality.

Another great game ruined by all the superfluous crap you have to do that has nothing to do with actually playing the game. I downloaded this game because it looked cool and the gameplay looked fun. However, you have to wade through so much pointless junk- collecting daily rewards, upgrading weapons, picking teammates, opening reward chests, collecting more daily rewards, sending pets on missions, reading notices, learning skills, participating in races, collecting even more daily rewards, responding to chats (and being forced to send out chat requests), oh and did I mention that there are even MOAR daily rewards you have to collect? I’m not joking, I have FOUR separate daily login rewards to collect. All together I counted 16- SIXFREAKINGTEEN different notices for things that I had to go click on or do and NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME!!! I’m not exaggerating, it really is that ridiculously absurd, and it just ruins what otherwise would have been a fantastic game. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because once you wade through all the useless crap and actually get to play the game it is pretty fun, and it looks fantastic. Give me a little more actual gameplay and much less of everything else and maybe I’ll come back and play again, but as for now I’m done. Sayonara.