You play as a young ninja warrior Kuro, who is armed with only his katana blade, and ninja reflexes, you must deliver a message to your master, that an evil rival ninja clan is going to be on the rise once again. Sure delivering a message to someone is simple, but not in this case, there are a bunch of ninja baddies that stand in your way of delivering a message to your master.
If anyone has played Ninja Gaiden on the NES (good times) then you will feel that this game plays in almost the same way. You will run, jump, double jump, and you cannot forget the classic ‘wall-jump’ and slash your way through each course. Each level will have you avoiding traps, and slicing and dicing down foes, by using a number of deadly ‘ninja’ techniques. Now these techniques all range from sliding behind an enemy, and then thrusting your blade into his back, air-dashing slashes, cool downward thrust, to doing a Scorpion like move, hooking them on a sickle and then pulling them towards you. Shadow Blade does differ itself from other classic gameplay, and brings them in with a more with the mobile age is a scoring system. Now take for instance, all chapters are composed of individual stages, and each stage will score you accordingly to how fast you can complete it. There are different tasks to complete, and if you do complete them successfully, you will receive a ninja star, or shuriken.
This game wants you to feel like a ninja, and this game comes with controls that are a little different. You can opt for the regular d-pad style controls, but you’ll want to go with the gesture and swiping control set, because it feels really damn good once you properly get into it. if you touch the left side of the screen, you will move left, and if you touch the right side of screen, you will move right. Yes movement is that simple, but it starts to get a little technical when you have to jump and move. Swipe up and you’ll jump up; Swipe diagonally up and to the side, and you’ll jump in that direction; Do it again and you’ll do a double jump; Then swipe to the left or right and you’ll perform a powerful side-slam; Now swipe down and you’ll crash to the ground and take out any enemies below.
Shadow Blade does offer great clean designs along with smooth as butter animation. I find it hard sometimes to identify an enemy, or even spot them, if they are in the darker part of the back ground the enemies will tend to blend in. The games music is catchy too, it reminds me of playing Ninja Gaiden, and Shinobi, great ninja titles with a nice twang evocative of what you would expect to hear with the telling of an ancient Japanese legend.
I believe that Shadow Blade could be the start of a great ninja franchise to be on mobile devices. If you are a fan of ninjas or just love playing classic ninja games, then you should give this game try its free at the Google Play Store. Happy Gaming Gamers, and Go Ninja, Go Ninja Go
