5-Mar-2004 What good is a ninja that can't sneak? About as much good as Sam Fisher stripped of his trusty night vision and silenced pistol, you'd think. I-Ninja begs to differ.
This cartoon action platformer seems to think ninjas are what you get if you put Ratchet & Clank in a black hoodie. It still has much to learn, grasshopper.
Copycat Antics Like Ratchet & Clank, I-Ninja's hero can fight hand-to-hand, shoot things, jump (including from wall-to-wall) and even grind rails. And much of the action does resemble the generic modern platform/action template as seen in Ratchet, Jak, and even Zelda. Only without Zelda's detail, the inventiveness of Ratchet, or the free-roaming levels of Jak. In short, just like the crappy graphical style that I-Ninja uses, the gameplay's a bit basic and under-nourished.
Fortunately, there's a belly-full of mini-games designed to divert attention away from the otherwise repetitive head-chopping and wall-running levels. Most of them fall into two camps: first-person shooting at things, or jumping onto a big ball and rolling around precarious walkways. Neither is exactly rocket science. Nor is the plot. When our ninja hero accidentally offs his own sensei, it falls to him to defeat Master O-Dor and save the world. That's it.
For The Chop It's not all bad though. Despite the basic gameplay, there is a reasonable level of satisfaction to be had racking up the combos and unleashing the head-chopping moves on the armies of ninja goons you face off against. If you're a platform addict who's finished every other half-decent action platformer around, this is worth jumping on. But that's a big 'if'.
This wants to be Ratchet-meets-Jak, but despite fast-paced action and some cool level design,
It fails through basic graphics, frustrating repeated missions and clunky combat.
Unless you can use a blade like Beckham can bend a ball, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Which doesn't stop I-Ninja turning up with nothing more than a chopper. Which is why it's a good job that at least his knife is a particularly big one, and gets bigger the further you go. No platformer is complete without bonus upgrades and new abilities. But I-Ninja's are pretty standard and you just know that a new upgrade heralds a new type of enemy vulnerable to your new skill.
For long-range combat you get shuriken, as well as sniper darts. In limited quantities
Head-chopping action. I-Ninja's sword upgrades through the game
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