Ninja Five-O

"Ninja KICK BUTT Action!"

Walking into Sams club on a shopping trip is not all bad, it can have its advantages, like a little thing I like to call inexpensive electronics. Anyone who's likes electronics heads to that section first of course. You get all the cheap games at incredible prices, and all the great games $5 less. I'm not a huge gamer, I just pick and choose. I'm skimming the Game Boy Advanced section when lo and behold a ninja game appears. It's the only one there so I decide to buy it instead of Road Rash: the hemroids saga. I found a game that has ninjas, I like ninjas, and it looks kinda old school through the screen grabs on the box. Imagine my surprise when I pop the sucker in my GBA and find out it's an awesome game! For only $13 at Sams club I got a whole month of fun. (Although it usually takes me longer to beat video games than other people.) I'll break this review into 5 sections, Gameplay, animation (graphics), sound, story, and overall.

_-_Gameplay_-_
This game is sweet, I haven't played very many other ninja games, but I know I like this one. It's fairly simple, but it adds challenge at the same time. So it keeps me hooked for a couple hours a day. I haven't tried easy mode, but I know medium mode is a lot of fun. When you kill more difficult enemies in the game you get power ups, for a total of three powers. First is basic ninja, with throwing shuriken (star). Second is fire ninja with fire balls, and final is what I like to call Black Ninja, with green speed laser action. There are three stages with about 3 levels inside. The first is the bank second is the factory and so on... Besides the special attacks there is also a sword slashing attack which is very useful, and some power surge effect that can kill a few enemies at a time. If you press the jump button twice you can use a grapple hook which is very simple to use yet effective. Overall gameplay is a solid 9.

_-_Animation (Graphics)_-_
For a game boy game these graphics are pretty average. It's the animations that really make you think the graphics are better than they really are. If you're on a bridge and you slice a baddie sometimes they'll fall off. The slide dash is nice, and sometimes when you're running you can bounce off walls which just looks so amazing. I could understand all this working on an N64 or something, but on my game boy it just amazed me. I can't explain all of the animations, most of them you would just have to see for yourself. Overall the animation and the graphics equals a very generous 10.

_-_Sound_-_
I'm going to keep this short but sweet. There aren't many catchy tunes to listen to while you're playing, but that doesn't make a huge difference. The baddies will grunt when you hit them, and there's all the normal sounds for movements etc... Sound equals a better than average 8.

_-_Story_-_
My game didn't come with a packet talking about characters and weapons etc.. I know Nintendo does this for their games but I'm going to guess that not all games do. You're Ninja Five-O and you work for the police. You go on rescue missions to save all the hostages you can. You encounter many evil people with knives, pistols, flamethrowers, and semi automatics as well as other ninjas such as yourself. Somehow these evil robbers have created giant robots who will throw power balls, blue acid water, and boomerangs at you. Try not to kill any hostages because some of the evil men will use them as protection. After you have collected all the keys to get through the locked doors where hostages will be kept you must get a final key to a door out of there. At the end of each stage you fight an evil warlord boss who is sick of you thwarting his plans. The story is basic and so are most of the characters, but the bosses are just hilarious, 9.

_-_Overall_-_
Gameplay 9, Graphics 10, Sound 9, and Story 9. With an average of 9.0 overall.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/04