10 second ninja X. the successor to 10 second ninja, is a high paced platform puzzler published by Curve Digital Entertainment where you have just ten seconds to cut through your enemies to your goal. Developed by Four Circle Interactive for pretty much all platforms except Nintendo, mac and old generation consoles it is available for PS vita, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 along with PC.
The story seems pretty ordinary for these kinds of things as an odd Dr. Robotnic-esk pirate decides to kidnap all the forest creatures from the forest and you (being some kind of forest guardian ninja) must rescue them by completing the evil pirate’s challenges. The writing seen in the preview works well as its super simple, clearly gives a feel for the characters and is fairly well written. Even well, if it’s a bit just straight up odd.
The gameplay is hard really hard – but not in its use as the control scheme is very basic. Use the arrow keys to move and Z and X to throw a ninja star. Pretty simple. Which is good as with the small amount of time you have to complete each level the last thing you want to do is to try and figure out how to use overcomplicated button mappings to re-do levels over and over again. Good gameplay to give you an early pass to arthritis. Which will happen (the repeating levels I mean – not the arthritis hopefully) as the fiendishly difficult levels played with their borderline sadistic scoring for each star will test if you are a true perfectionist with these kinds of skill based games. Part of me understands why the scoring is so difficult as that’s the premise of the game and that when you finally get that second star on a level and it tells you are 0.08 seconds away from the next you should feel like you can do it. However this was not the feeling I got. Instead it felt more like mocking and after spending a good ten minutes doing the exact same motion time and time again until somehow I was faster it inspired annoyance rather than the pleasure of feeling I had achieved something.
But, there were some nice small things that really helped the game focus on allowing you to do your best such as the timer starting only when you hit a button meaning that you wouldn’t lose time to idleness. Another useful design was how resetting a level was both easily done with a simple press of a button that was close to the original layout and the speed in which you were back to playing again. Also how the enemies even in the early levels were set up and the level design incorporated within this gave the task quite a simple look on the surface until you figured out through much stress and error its complexity. Even in the small amount of secret areas I found seemed to have this hard-core platforming engrained into them. It was also surprising to see how much range a ninja sword has. Which I am not sure if it was a mistake from the designers or deliberate to allow you to finish the level faster. Either way this was constant so did not really effect the gameplay. I mean what idiot tries to talk realism into a game were you’re a ninja that protects all the forest creatures from an evil pirate that makes robots that’s sole purpose in life seems to wait to be destroyed.
There was very little sound. I mean there was some atmospheric music while you jumped about the levels and really chilled jazz music in the menu lobby – it just at least felt like it. Which may be due to the game going with the whole ninja vibe with appropriate sound effects and noises which also helped allow you to concentrate on timing those shurikens I guess. But, it would have been nice to have some memorable track to take away from the preview. The simple design also lends well to the game focusing on its gameplay with not many flashy effects that would distract you from finishing the level quickly like a real assassin of the night.
Overall the preview was great and gave a lot to look forward to and if you were a fan of the previous ten second ninja game then this is looking like it will certainly deliver in terms of its difficulty. The style and story seemed very well designed from simple levels and dialogue encountered during the preview. From what was encountered during my short ten second ninja X experience it seems this will be a game that will test your skill in a gruelling set of challenges that will make you feel like some kind of amazing ninja. Something that the preview certainly showed me that I am not, or at least patience is not a virtue I have in an abundant supply.
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