Mini Ninjas review

While we’re on the subject of unexplored possibilities, one of the game’s big features is the ability to possess animals and scamper around in their furry bodies. Every enemy you defeat releases the innocent little bunny rabbit, fox, bear or whatever was at its core, and Hiro can use a spell to control them for a certain period of time.

After we’d tried it a few times we began to wonder what the point was. Animals can sniff out plants and herbs for mixing potions, and some of them can fit through narrow gaps, but there’s basically no reason to use them unless you’re a completist. Bigger ones have limited fighting abilities that pale in comparison to any of the ninjas, and if you get hit then you tend to lose control of the creature anyway. The birds can’t fly, the frogs can’t swim…

Before we get too carried away with whining about the many things that separate Mini Ninjas from greatness we ought to stress that there’s an awful lot of stuff in the game that we completely love. As befits a title from the company that made Hitman, there’s usually more than one way to achieve an objective. Fields are covered in long grass that you can stealthily crawl through, flanking enemies to attack them from behind or avoiding them altogether. When you reach a castle you can hack your way around the streets or tiptoe out of sight along strings of lanterns.

If you’re determined to get full value for money from all the characters and abilities you could try setting up multi-ninja combos – for example, play the flute to make enemies dance, then switch to Futo to smash their dancing-fool faces with a hammer, and switch again to speedy tiger-ninja to mop up the remnants. It’s not exactly the most intuitive way to do things, involving as it does a lot of pausing for menus, and it’s basically a clumsy workaround for something that should have been a proper feature in the game. Anyway, you can do it if you like.

When you get into the swing of fighting, the battles are fast and exciting. Sometimes you’ll be facing a sort of wizard who keeps turning the freed bunnies and foxes back into enemies, so there’s a tactical element as you try to take out the more powerful enemies first – not always easy when you’re surrounded by foot soldiers and there are archers peppering you from towers above.

You get loads of secondary weapons such as shurikens, spiky things you throw on the floor while running away, bombs that induce sneezing fits… Hiro has a range of spells including fireballs, tornadoes and shockwaves. But you can only have one equipped at a time, with five on a quick-select menu wheel. We’d got two thirds of the way through the game before we realised there was a bunch of stuff in the inventory that we’d never used. And whoever decided that when you choose another ninja the quick-select wheel remains filled with Hiro’s unusable spells should not be designing user interfaces.

Regardless of its flaws, it’s maybe just one sequel away from being indispensable.

Sep 10, 2009