Cubic Ninja

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

Cubic Ninja is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo 3DS in 2011. This game has players controlling the titular cubic ninja using the Nintendo 3DS’s gyroscopic motion control, moving the blocky character through mazes to reach each level’s exit.

The premise is at least somewhat interesting, presenting a more videogamey version of those wooden tilting puzzles where players need to guide a ball to the end. Unfortunately, Cubic Ninja drops the ball (ha) when it comes to the execution. The movement controls are sluggish and even require the player to flip their Nintendo 3DS upside-down to get past some obstacles, something that seems clever when you first encounter it, but by the zillionth time it has long been rendered gimmicky and tedious. Players can opt to use more traditional gamepad controls instead, but not only does this defeat the whole point of this game, but it reveals just how terrible this game’s controls really are.

In terms of presentation, don’t expect much. Blocky, largely monochrome environments match your blocky character. It doesn’t look bad, but there’s absolutely nothing especially interesting or noteworthy going on here. And while the somewhat relaxed New Age-y synthesized soundtrack isn’t bad, it doesn’t seem to fit the game’s aesthetic or its ninja-y theme.

I do appreciate the good-sized 100 level length of this game, and this content is made even larger (in theory) through the use of a level builder and the ability to share levels with other players… via QR codes. Yeah, good luck finding levels this way (although apparently this feature is used to access an exploit on the Nintendo 3DS to enable homebrew software, so there’s that I guess).

However, if you’re not trying to make use of said exploit, I don’t see you getting much enjoyment out of Cubic Ninja. The premise of doing an Arcade-style videogame take on the wooden tilting puzzles has potential, but the controls are so terrible here that this game is likely to just lead to frustration.

tl;dr – Cubic Ninja is an Arcade-style game where players control the titular cubic ninja using the Nintendo 3DS’s gyroscopic motion control. It’s not a terrible concept, but it’s ruined by poor, sluggish controls.

Grade: D+

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