An evil mole and his army have invaded a peaceful village of rabbits and stolen all of their carrots.  Now it’s up to a ninja rabbit to get them back!  Ninjin: Clash of Carrots is a high speed beat ‘em up with shooter elements.  It’s available to download on nearly all the current game consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

In the game, you can run left, right, up, and down.  In this way, it kind of controls like a classic 2-D brawler.  But since you and the enemies are constantly running forward, it kind of feels like a 2-D shooter, too.  As a ninja rabbit, you can swing your sword or other weapon to defeat enemies in front of you.  You can also dash to get in front of or behind enemies.  Press both the dash and attack buttons to do a dash attack.  You can also aim the R stick and release it to toss ninja stars and other throwing weapons in any direction.  Most of these attacks will deplete your stamina meter, and you have to wait for it to gradually fill up before you can use those moves again.  Make it through 8 waves of enemies to finish a level.  If you run out of energy by being hit too many times, you’ll have to start the level over again.

Defeated enemies leave behind carrots that you can collect and spend in a shop between levels.  You can buy new weapons, badges that give you buffs, new throwing darts, and other goodies.  A second player can join in for some co-op fun, but it doesn’t really make the game any easier.  In fact, when things get chaotic, it can be hard to tell who is who.  A simple 1P, 2P icon above the players might’ve solved that problem.  The other main problem with the game is that the difficulty spikes way up very quickly, and that’s what made me lose interest faster.

Kid Factor:

Ninjin: Clash of Carrots is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.  You can hit cartoony animal enemies with swords and other ninja weapons, but they just fly off the screen when defeated.  There are some poop jokes here and there, too.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the difficulty.

Tags: Game Reviews