Slash Ninja

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Piotr Stalski

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Review:

Slash Ninja is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo Switch in 2020. In this game, players must use a sword to slash at various items thrown across the screen, cutting food items while missing explosives. If this formula sounds familiar, that’s because it is clearly copying the classic 2010 mobile game Fruit Ninja.

The presentation here is decent enough, with reasonably-detailed 3D objects in front of a flat background, with this backed by whimsical but forgettable background music. It’s nothing impressive, and it lacks the whimsical charm of Fruit Ninja, but it gets the job done.

However, one major problem absolutely demolishes this game – the controls. This game requires players to use Joy-Con controllers’ motion controls to swipe at objects, but these simply do not work – after an initial sync holding the controller sideways, the game doesn’t indicate how to hold the controller is meant to be held as you’re moving it around, and no way I tried seemed to work properly. What’s more, there’s no gyroscope recalibration, so when this quickly drifts away from where it started, you can’t fix it and just have to try to figure out what new orientation the game is trying to get you to point the controller in.

Players may wonder if this game is compatible with touchscreen controls, to mirror the input method of Fruit Ninja’s original release. However, apparently to add insult to injury, Slash Ninja does have touchscreen controls… but only in menus.

As a result of this, Slash Ninja is utterly unplayable. Do not waste a single penny on this absolute disaster of a game.

tl;dr – Slash Ninja is an Arcade-style game where players use Joy-Con motion controls to slash a sword at food while avoiding explosives, with gameplay clearly copying the classic game Fruit Ninja. Unfortunately, the controls are a complete disaster that render this game absolutely unplayable. Do not spend money on this trash.

Grade: F

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