Fruit Ninja
Arcade
Developed by Halfbrick Studios
Reviewed by Philip L.
4.5 out of 5 stars
There have been over 20 million downloads of Fruit Ninja on many platforms. The first edition was released on April 21, 2010 for iPod and iPhones. On July 12, the next version came out for iPad. On September 17, another edition came out for Androids, while on December 22nd the next edition came out for windows Phones. More versions were adapted for other phone systems and in August of 2011 Fruit Ninja came out for the Xbox 360 Kinect.
The point of the game is for players to slice the fruit as it flies on to the touchscreen. Many modes throughout the game change the game flow such as arcade mode, Zen mode, and the normal Classic mode. In Arcade mode, players have sixty seconds to get a high score while avoiding bombs that take off seconds when sliced. There are special bananas that give players power-ups, like frozen bananas that stop the time and slow down the fruit, bonus bananas that award double points for a certain amount of seconds, and combo bananas that cause a large number of fruit, with no bombs, to fly across the screen for big points. In Classic mode, there are bombs that end the game if you slice them; otherwise you lose when three fruit aren’t sliced before they fall off the screen. In Zen mode, there are no bombs at all, so you are timed to see how many fruit you can slice in sixty seconds. In both Classic and Arcade modes there are also pomegranates that you can slice as many times as you can for extra points in a certain time limit. In all modes, slicing many fruits together awards bonus pints and sometimes fruits like papaya can be sliced for fifty points. Multiplayer allows two people to play on the same screen using Apple’s game center. The screen is split in half and players can only slice the fruit that matches their color or slice that white fruit that is neutral. High scores can be saved using Open feint, an online score app that lets you share your scores with others. The Kinect is similar except the player moves his arms and legs to slice the fruit. Lastly, players can unlock cooler blades by doing achievements such as slicing a certain amount of one fruit or playing a certain mode a set number of times.
I have mixed opinions of this app, but overall Fruit Ninja is an excellent, addicting game that is played by many around the world. The actual game play is great and all game modes are playable over and over again. Sometimes the game gets boring because slicing fruits over and over is not the most eye-popping thing on the planet. I wish there were different difficulties so there would be a challenge, but I only tried to get all the different blades and post a high score better than my brother’s. The Kinect, in my opinion, gave another challenge because you have to move your body pretty fast and your body tires after a while. Once, my brother and I picked up the dog and used his legs to slice the fruit, but afterward the dog was so tired he flipped over and lay like a dead animal on the road. The other day I saw a rip-off of Fruit Ninja, created by a different company, called Veggie Samurai that was worse than Fruit Ninja. The last good thing about Fruit Ninja is that it is very cheap and is a good thing to have on anyone’s iPod.
