Fruit Ninja Kinect is a free download when you purchase a
Kinect. It's fun for the first two
minutes, but gets boring far too quick.
In Fruit Ninja, your task is pretty much what it sounds like
from the title: fruit will come flying onto the screen, and you try to slice
the fruit in half before it leaves.
You have a shadow displayed on the wall behind the fruit so
you can more easily aim your slices, which is a very well-thought detail. Unfortunately, that's the most creative
aspect of the design.
There are many kinds of fruit, most of which slice like all
other kinds. However, when you slice
certain kinds of bananas, you might slow down the speed of the fruits, or
double your points for a short time. If
you strike a dragonfruit, you zoom in on it and can continue to slice it for a
huge combo.
There are also bombs that are thrown which you must avoid,
which can make you lose ten points, or end the round prematurely.
There are a few different modes to the game with little difference:
some modes are timed, others let you keep going until you miss three fruit. There is also a Challenge mode which simply
mixes up the modes and gives you a goal to reach each round.
There are also two-player modes where you can work together
or compete.
However, there is little in the way of variety and the
rewards simply aren't worth the trouble (different colors for your slashing
motions, new backgrounds). There are
also 21 Xbox achievements to unlock, which seems like way too many.
Ultimately, Fruit Ninja Kinect is no more than a party game,
and even then it is not one you'd spend much time on. It's a minigame that should have been
included in a different game. It might
have worked well if it were a sixth game in Kinect Adventures, for instance,
but it did not need to be its own entity.
But while the game is fun for five minutes, what kills the
experience is the menu. You activate
buttons by slicing them, and I find myself slicing the wrong button when I am
simply moving my hand to reach the right button. The scrolling menu for selecting visual
options also seems to behave too quickly:
when I try to slide the menu down, it slides up.
I wish I could write a longer review, but there's is nothing
else to talk about. It is that simple a
game.
Fortunately it's a free game, so the most you are wasting is
some space on your Xbox.
At the end of the day, Fruit Ninja Kinect is better suited
to a Mario Party minigame than a standalone Kinect experience. It's okay that it shows off the Kinect's
abilities, but Kinect Adventures does this already, and far better.
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