Super Ninja Warrior Extreme
April 2, 2012 4 Comments
Usually when people accuse me of having a bias against punishers, I point to Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes, the second game I ever reviewed here and an original member of the leaderboard. Of course, that review was done on July 2, and I haven’t been exceptionally kind to any of its kin since then. Well, now I have another one I can point to and say “I didn’t hate it.” Well, except the name. It’s called Super Ninja Warrior Extreme. Thankfully they tacked on “Extreme” to the end of the name, because I can’t picture myself playing a game called Super Ninja Warrior. Maybe if it was just Ninja Warrior, but I think we’ll all agree that a ninja warrior who is super but not extreme must be some kind of pussy. The whole point of being super is so that you can also be extreme. Of course, the flip side of that is being an extreme ninja warrior that is not super is just needlessly reckless and wrong.
The only explanation I have for why the dude has a beehive on his face is he's EXTREME!
Actually, I think the “super” part of the equation is misleading. If your ninja dude brushes up against a spike, he explodes instantly into a mass of limbs and blood. Yeesh. I would hate to think of what would happen to him if he used a back scratcher. Actually, all enemies and projectiles result in instant death. To balance things out, you have a sword with a decent amount of reach and the ability to wall jump. And, well that’s pretty much it. Thirty levels, go.
I’m not really sure if being a punisher was the aim of Hyper Samurai Soldier Supreme. I say this because most of the 30 levels aren’t really all that hard to beat. More than half of them I finished on my first try, and that doesn’t just include the opening stages. There were levels that left me temporarily agitated, but they are immediately followed by levels that can be solved in around fifteen seconds. This happens even late in the game, resulting in a difficulty curve with more dips than a roller coaster.
I saw this same scene when I took that tour of the jerky factory.
Otherwise, it’s not a bad game by any means. It’ll take an hour to finish, and that’s fine. That means it doesn’t stick around long enough to wear out its welcome. The controls are pretty good. A touch sensitive, maybe. In a few later stages, you’ll have to nudge the stick with a degree of delicacy that rivals giving CPR to a butterfly. Oh, and every stage ends with the same boss that takes two hacks to kill, no more, no less. Even the final stage has this dude in it, and thus things end without feeling climatic in the least bit. I had planned on bitching about Super Ninja Warrior Extreme using a four-digit password system instead of saving, but given how quickly it can be finished, any save system at all is as unnecessary as a driver’s manual written in Braille.
Super Ninja Warrior Extreme was developed by Ho-Hum Games
80 Microsoft Points wonder why there is no game called Tepid Ninja Warrior Mild in the making of this review.
Did you know I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points on Thursday? Oh, you did. You don’t care. Sigh. Well, you can at least humor me and vote for next week’s game. Just follow the link for a list.
Indie Gamer Chick 
God damn it! You hit basically all the same points I did, but thanks to a procrastinating editor my review isn’t out yet – even though I wrote it first! Grrrrr.
Spelling/grammatical errors aside, this is where editing yourself comes in handy. We got ours up on March 25 and promptly moved onto the next most extreme thing… Offspring Fling.
Heh, my dad’s best friend is named AJ.
There is an amazingly large population of AJ’s out there. I personally know 4 other people who are also called AJ (probably none of them are your dad). For the record, I watched a lot of Simon & Simon as a kid, and I took my name from there… which makes me cooler than just about anyone else who has ever existed, as well as the majority of fictional characters. Not AJ Simon of course, but most of them.