Final Ninja

By: Derek Yu

On: July 29th, 2008

Final Ninja is a new platformer by the same guys that made Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam. In the game you control a ninja who has ninja star grappling hooks. That’s right, ninja stars that are also grappling hooks!

Like Dirk, Final Ninja has a fun premise and looks great (love the “stealth” camo effect!), but also suffers from a lot of the same problems – relatively uninspired level design, repetitive graphics, and meaningless pickups. The game does pick up in the later levels, and at least the hand-holdy textual “hints” are fewer and far between (and less irritating), but overall, I was still disappointed. It’s not bad, it’s worth checking out… it could also be so much better.

This is obviously a trend with Nitrome games, which leads me to wish that they would stop making Flash games for the quick n’ dirty Miniclip audience. They really aren’t doing enough with their talent.

TIGdb: Entry for Final Ninja

Posted in Browser Games, Platformers | Tags: Nitrome

Sebioff

Hey,
I’m sorry to post this in the totally wrong place, but I couldn’t find a contact form…
Since about two days AntiVir throws dozens of trojan/whatever warnings at me whenever I try to open the forums (always different warnings) and 4-5 seemingly random named programs try to access the internet :/
I tried it on different PCs with the same results.
Any idea what’s going on there?
slang

ininspired level design?
I thought the level design was rather good.

repetitive graphics?
Huh? It’s a flash game after all and not some 20 $ indie game. I don’t think Nitrome wants to spend months doing a game and they’re certainly not aiming at the same crowd that bought Noitu Love2.

meaningless pickups?!
You get a bonus for collecting all the cash and sushi bowls replenish your life bars. What exactly could be considered meaningless here?

Imo a rather sloppy review missing the point somehow and comparing apples to oranges. Nitrome’s roots and foundation are flash games and games for mobiles, not indie stuff for a very limited audience.
Mark

Also, you can skip all the ‘hints’ in the first one if you want. (If they annoy you so much)
Codemonkey

Wow that looks like it could be an awesome game!
Untitled

Argh, I guess I’m going to have to install AVG temporarily; that page doesn’t give much removal information.
Gutter

@ slang : Derek is right. Nitrome is going for the ad-backed portal only, and they could use their talent for a “real” game, as opposed to what seems to be an episodic incursion into what they can do.

They have some fierce defenders, but really their game is becoming “indie” only in look, not in substance. They aren’t more indie than the maker of Dinner Dash, and yet we don’t see Dinner Dash news around here.
Fishy Boy

I thought the game was pretty fun. The physics for the game were just right, and my only complaint is that it’s tricky to grapple in short notice. If you’re falling and about to die, you really don’t have time to wait for the game to realize you want to use the hook.
Towerofprostitutes

Boooooooooring.
doint it like bruitit

@ Gutter: he said their stuff wasnt indie
slang

@Gutter

As the commenter above already mentioned, my point is that Nitrome never was “indie” which to many visitors of this site seems to be the gaming equivalent of “arthouse cinema” or “experimental underground”.
Yes, they are independant in the sense that they’re not some kind of EA outpost. But that’s about it. Their background is graphic design and flash programming and their goal is producing free, small and stylish games FOR THE MASSES combining retro concepts with a more casual approach in terms of difficulty and leveldesign. That’s why they produced several games for MTV arcade.
As for the “real game” you mentioned, there’s an older interview on Mochiland where Mat Annal, one of the founders, clearly states that they’re looking into doing some bigger projects on the DS or Wii in the future.

http://mochiland.com/articles/developer-spotlight-nitrome
Dan MacDonald

This game has so much potential, the art and production quality are great. The mechanics, while the core of it is strong, are not highlighted by the level design. Half way through the 2nd level I felt like I was repeating the 1st level with puffy electric balls getting in my way. This game has the potential to be the next nikujin with incredibly deep and subtle gameplay. Sadly I don’t think that can really be realized as a flash game on miniclip.

There’s no technology reason why it can’t, it’s just the nature of making flash games and the flash market. There’s not much return on time invested to make it any deeper.
slick

Nitrome has good artists but they make the most boring games ever. they have mastered this art as noone else before.
squidi

Though I am somewhat biased against Nitrome, I do think that they are very capable at making great, even jaw droppingly amazing games. The fact that they don’t is somewhat a mystery to me. I think they just don’t care. And more than anything about them, that’s what drives me nuts. They should be someone I pay attention to, but every time I do, I’m disappointed. At this point, they could make an honestly amazing game and I probably wouldn’t even bother to play it.
slang

Interesting. Several hours ago, I posted a reply to Gutter’s post explaining why I think that Nitrome is not “indie” and doing just fine developing games based on retro concepts with a more casual approach. I also included a link to an interview with one of the founders of Nitrome.
Where is it?
Bezzy

Could really do with a corner grab – I was using the grapple to compensate for that, but it felt a little messy.

A slightly more immediate “stick to wall” state (rather than having to wait to fall) would improve it, too. And from the wall stick, it’d be nice if “up” did the same thing as “away”.

Really rather liked it, but the above shows there’s definite room for improvement.
Gutter

@ slang : No worries, I missed the last paragraph of your original post.

Still, news about Nitrome should be kept on JayIsGame or something, they have a hard on for them. Even having their games in the TIGdb seems weird, unless it should start listing all the Miniclip games. It feels like they qualify only because they have a talented pixel artist.
Zaphos

*”I also included a link to an interview with one of the founders of Nitrome. Where is it?”*

Comments with links in tend to get stuck in a spam filter waiting for moderator approval. It’ll probably take a while for your comment to appear.
Zaphos

Heh, actually, I just noticed it appears to be there now.
slang

@Zaphos
Yep, seems it finally crawled out of the spam filter;-)
Anyway, thanks for the explanation. Guess it’s better to post links in a separate comment then…
v-rus

I like it, it’s got nice graphics (really great for a miniclip game!) and it’s fun. But for a ninja game, I’d hope it was a bit more fast-paced, and the grappling star just seemed a little too hard to use.
Skofo

Why isn’t this under freeware?
Exoduster

A disappointing Nitrome game? Shocking.
radishlaw

Is it just me, or is the control a little too loose? I admit I am unfamiliar with this type of wall jumping, and I feel the game has very weird wall slide, making it impossible to wall jump immediately, and the grappling hook is a bit unwieldy for me.
I have to say it is even worse than their last game.
haowan

For once I couldn’t agree more with squidi.
csr

Cave Story ripoff
wormguy

Wow, why so much hate here?

This was a legitimately enjoyable game. I even bothered to beat it, which is a pretty major mark in my book as far as Flash games go.