The Babble Review: Mini Ninjas

Ninjas — what kid can resist their allure? Certainly not my kids, who used their own mini-ninja skills to wrest the controller from my hand as I road-tested the new IO Interactive/Eidos video game Mini Ninjas. Here’s the lowdown — and, yeah, the kids ultimately won out.

What It’s All About: Like so many of the animated features that’ve long since replaced “real” movies for us parents, Mini Ninjas is aimed at kids but designed for adults. There’s scant little violence, and aside from some mild peril, the action is more cute than it is cutting – but the game’s scenery will floor you, and the cheeky humor and classic hero’s-quest storyline will keep you engaged while you watch the kids fight their way to glory.

You start the game as Hiro, a pint-sized ninja sent into the wild to stop an evil samurai warlord from disrupting the balance of nature with his malicious Kuji magic. (Specifics aren’t important; just know the stuff is bad news.) Plenty of obstacles aim to keep you from completing your journey, most surprisingly the cute, innocent animals that the evil master has turned into his samurai minions. Oh, and farts—but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Playing the Game: For all its whiz-bang visual energy, Mini Ninjas is surprisingly easy to play (translation: kids will eat it up, while seasoned gamers will beat it in under a day). You play in third-person throughout, moving through the visually dazzling landscape on a quest to defeat the evil samurai warlord. As you fight your way through the game’s levels, you can also rescue fellow mini ninjas who’ve been captured during their similar quests. With each ninja you free, you get the chance to play as that character and its unique “power attacks.”

As for battling, there’s not a whole lot to it—which explains why my 6-year-old was able to cruise through combat without memorizing the correct buttons for particular attacks. The action does get progressively more challenging, however, as varying enemies and multiple attackers cause you to step up your game. Battle, of course, isn’t all there is to do in Mini Ninjas: You can roam relatively freely throughout the levels, collecting food, statues and magical items. Or you can simply explore the scenery (the water levels alone are worth the admission fee) and bask in the soothing kung-fu soundtrack.

Family Appeal: Mini Ninjas is rated E10+ by the ESRB, specifically for “Cartoon Violence” and “Crude Humor.” Yep, you engage in hand-to-hand combat, and swords, claws, throwing stars and (when you’re playing as the lovable lummox Futo) hammers abound. When you strike down a samurai, however, there’s no blood: Instead, the defeated warrior disappears into a smoke cloud (in my opinion, one of the game’s coolest graphic elements) before reverting to its original forest-animal form.

As for the “Crude Humor” descriptor, well, you can thank one of the game’s four bosses for that one. In lieu of swords or spells, the big guy (pictured above) uses his own gassiness to attack you. Gross, sure, but try telling that to your kids.

Mini Ninjas is available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS and PC — get it new at Amazon.