Ninja Reflex Wii Review

Ninja Reflex has the Wii remote acting as a sword, a nunchaku, shuriken and a pair of chopsticks. It’s also another mini game collection, which means you either have already stopped reading this article (come back, be it game or person, we all deserve a chance) or are in acceptance of the large quantity of such collections that fill the Wii shelf space up.

Ninja Reflex obviously has you playing as one of those stealthy masked assassins of Japanese origin, or a ninja in training at least. The title also suggests some reflex training and you’ll certainly be getting that as you walk the path of masked anonymity without even a shadow to show your presence.

At the beginning of the game you’ll be choosing a ninja name by combining preselected names or shuffling them randomly (with a possible 25, 000 combinations you would have to be the pickiest ninja in history to not be content with at least one or two of them). My name is now Silent Sword, at least in the game it is, and my horribly clichéd sensei refers to me as Sword San at all times. A small and pleasing touch if nothing else.

Going under the name of Silent Sword I then directed my sights towards the black belt, or at least the white belt to begin with, as black belts are never handed on a plate to lowly novice ninjas that still possess rubber swords and plastic shurikens. There’s actually eight belt colours to claim before becoming a master black belt ninja and you’ll have to show sensei your worth in a number of reflex games before earning each one.

These six reflex games have you doing what ninjas do best, utilising swords, shurikens and nunchakus, as well as more unorthodox training methods such as fly and fish catching.

The controls are generally very good, holding a button down and using a throwing gesture to chuck a shuriken, waving a spooky disembodied and gloved hand stealthily around to grab fish out of ponds, and catching flies with a pair of chopsticks and then dropping them in rice bowls. The Nunchaku and katana games are less successful and, due to their unresponsiveness and difficulty, may scare away the casual audience that the game hopes to entertain.

There may only be six games, and whilst each one does have its variations to mix things up a little it’s still not enough to stop things from becoming as stale as an aged loaf of bread, but whoever said that ninja training wasn‘t repetitive? The same goes for the multiplayer, whilst fun as a rental or a budget buy, there’s just not enough content to justify the £29.99 asking price.