January 10, 2011
Fruit Hatred Taken To A New Level
I am very late to the party cause, you know, I just played Fruit Ninja.
I kinda get it, and I kind of don’t.
Half the time when I play these super popular app store games, I just fail to get it. There’s just not enough there for me, since I’m used to more intense gaming experiences. Cut the Rope is really the exception to that, but I was hoping for another one. I had heard people like Jeff Green saying fantastic things about Fruit Ninja, so in a moment of weakness I paid my dollar.
Basically, Fruit Ninja is an arcade score attack sort of game. Fruits and bombs flip up from the bottom of the screen, and you have to slash across them with your finger to cut the fruits. Miss 3 fruits, and you fail. Cut a bomb, and you fail.
And that’s it, really.
Granted, there are plenty of modes in the game, including a bombless timed score attack and an online multiplayer, which is pretty neat. There are lots of silly unlockables you get from cutting many of different types of fruit. But in the end, this is just not a game I could see myself getting addicted to unless I really had friends constantly competing with me for high scores. The game does its best to enable that, using Game Center and OpenFient to put friend leaderboards right into the game, but since I only had one or two people who had played the game, and weeks ago, it wasn’t really much of an appeal to me.
However, you do have to give the game credit. It is only a buck. I don’t feel cheated or anything, though perhaps the amount of variety is a bit low compared to something like, say, Hook Worlds. However, the game controls flawlessly. It is designed, from the ground up, for the touch screen. You feel in control and powerful as you play. The fruits cut apart in realistic ways based on how you slash. It does feel really good. They nailed that part. That’s probably why the game is so popular, and hey, it earned it. This is a game that anyone can get into. It just doesn’t go any deeper, like Cut the Rope does.
But everything can’t be Cut the Rope, I suppose. I’m glad I tried it, but yeah, I don’t know if I’m jumping for joy to suggest it or anything.