I wonder if in a few years there will be talk of the consolidation of iOS games. If they did, would they use the term in a good way or would it continue to have the derogatory connotation it is now attached to? Whatever the case may be, 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 the Summer of Arcade and people might wonder why they’d pay for a game they may already have on their phones, but what’s more surprising is that it’s actually a great showcase for Kinect and hopefully a model that they can learn to move on.
Ten times more fun?
Fruit Ninja is a mobile game where you use your fingers or thumbs to cut fruit. You might have to avoid the bombs mixed in with the pineapple and papaya or be tasked with getting the highest score possible in a short time limit, but for the most part that’s really the whole game. The fruit goes up and you have to cut it before it falls. It’s a simple game but more than earns its price of 99 cents. Fruit Ninja Kinect isn’t 99 cents though, it’s 800 MS Points ($10) and that’s going to be hard for a lot of people to ignore. I really can’t justify a game that’s ten times the price on one platform when it adds so 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 the background. At first I thought this was just a cute way to try to implement Kinect, but I quickly realized that it’s also the most important part of game feedback for the player. When you wave your arms or kick your feet, little slices run across the screen where your limbs are in shadow, and as long as there’s fruit in the way, they’ll slice apart in gloriously squishy fashion. Your shadow tells you where you are and how you line up with objects on the screen. It’s a really smart design choice because it removes the lack of spatial awareness that many other motion control games are guilty of. While it’s not a form of actual tactile feedback, it goes a long way toward making you feel like you’re always able to slice every piece of fruit on the screen and never fall victim to a skittish sensor.
Gamers will surely want to know if the Kinect works as it should or if it cuts out. The answer is really very strange. During my time with the game, I never encountered a single issue with the Kinect that didn’t register a swipe with my arm or foot. Outside the game it’s something else. Menu navigation is via the slash of mode names that circle around a stationary fruit on the screen. You still see the same kind of shadow you would see in the game, but for some reason it often cuts off and cuts off, and when it comes back it takes time to calibrate. It’s shocking how often this happens and it’s bound to give people a very bad impression from the start. I’m hoping Halfbrick Studios sends out a patch to fix this because once you get through the menus the game runs great.
Anyone familiar with the series will already know that it’s not just about slicing up a couple of fruits and watching the points add up. 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’s also a strict three-strike marker and you’re out for round-ending if you let three fruits fall unscathed. Coupled with the fact that there’s an instant roundup if you slice a bomb, the three fruit penalty makes this the hardest mode of the bunch.
On the other hand, Arcade mode is much more hectic but puts a time limit on things. Here there will be a special fruit that you can cut that falls or flies across the screen. If you manage to cut one of them in the short time they spend, you will receive a power-up. These include things like Freeze which slows everything down, Frenzy which litters the screen with a ton of fruit at a time, and Double Points which gives you, well, double the 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. They are both 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. Challenge Mode is just like the rest but with specific goals in mind. So you may need to get 150 points in Classic or 300 in Arcade, but the rules of those modes apply the same way. It’s not worth calling it a mode and I think it would have been better if they had developed 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 these aren’t too remarkable either. You can change your shadow design or alter your blade color to make your hits do different things. I guess it’s not something worth being critical about, but this doesn’t seem to go far enough to justify the higher price of the game. I would have liked to see some cross-promotion with other titles so you could change your shadow into other characters maybe, or even change the sword into something goofy or funny.
The biggest addition to the game by far is the party mode which allows two players to play at once. Players play at the same time on their own half of the screen and compete for the best score. To keep things clear, each player gets their own color. Still, things get really hectic with both people waving their arms around and I definitely had a few chances to accidentally punch my better half in the face. She also managed to hit me a few times, decidedly less on purpose. It goes without saying that (security issues aside) this is the perfect mode for anyone with kids who is looking for a game to play together.
It’s hard to score Fruit Ninja Kinect without considering the importance gamers place on cost. This game is within the reach of many people at a tenth of 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 Kinect, while retaining the same short burst, leaderboard searching, addictive gameplay, and adding 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 go back, there’s no real way to progress. 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 progress and/or fun, but lacks the depth or polish to stand out. Some will use it for the best, others will say the opposite. Most of us will be perfectly satisfied with it.