Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots (Review) iPhone 4, iPad, iPod Touch

Review Score:

Ever wish you could slice and dice food with the best of the chefs? Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots by Halfbrick Studios (iPhone $0.99) is the answer for you. You need to chop and slice your way through various levels of flying fruit and slice the magic beans for extra lives, but be careful of the bombs that will explode when struck, taking one of your lives. The fruit includes tomatoes, pineapple, two types of apples, kiwi, and strawberries among others.

Upon opening the game for the first time, you will have the option of using OpenFeint or Game center. Once you choose, you can start your slicing and dicing. On the page to start your adventure, you will see the swashbuckler Puss in Boots in all his glory. You will have the choice for a new game, stash, extras, and movie site that must be slashed to get the option.

The news does not need to be sliced. It just needs to be touched. Extras will bring you to the music level, mute, and voice options, as well as the option to switch between OpenFeint and Game Center, more games, following on Facebook and Twitter, and About which will give you the credits and hints to help you with your game. The movie site takes you to the Puss In Boots website.

New game will start you slicing and dicing fruit without a time limit. You have three hearts. Each heart represents a life. Slice all the fruit because if you miss a piece, you will lose a heart. The bombs mixed in with the fruit will kill you instantly.

Once you run out of hearts you are dead. To get extra lives, slice the magic beans. If you slice a bean and have all 3 hearts left, you will get points instead. There are two destinies – Desperado and Bandito. Desperado is about surviving the longest and slicing as many fruits as you can. Try to get as many combos as you can (3 or more fruit sliced at the same time). If you hit a bomb you die. The screen will show you your score for the last game played and your best score as well as a fairytale fact.

If you click on the arrows with the fairytale fact, it will allow you to connect and see your friends scores and Leaderboards. The longer you survive, the more challenging the game becomes. As the fruit is launched, you will hear a sound like when fireworks are launched. When you die, the sound of your blade hitting the metal of the bomb will become a fimiliar one (a sound you will come to dread).

These sounds add to the game experience by creating a sense of anticipation. Bandito will have you facing challenges of all kinds with a time limit. These range from slicing a certain number of fruit within a set time limit, slicing fruit behind shutters, slicing bombs as they turn into fruit, cracking a coconut, and other challenges. The music that plays during the interlude scenes plays here as well.

There are “3 acts” — Act 1 is San Ricardo, Act 2 is Cat Cantina, Act 3 is Sky Castle and then the finale. There are 4 blocks to choose from along each one showing a different challenge. If you fail a challenge, you will lose a heart. You have 3 hearts. Upon success, you will see a fruit percentage that you did compared to what your challenge was, your combo slices and misses, and Reflex efficiency; this adds up to your total score for that challenge.

All the individual scores are added up to get your final score. It will once again show your current score versus your highest score as well as a fairytale fact. As you reach higher scores and obtain certain goals, you will unlock different blades and backgrounds.

These can be accessed by going to the Stash screen. If you touch on the locked icon for each blade or background, it will show you how to get that object. There are 20 achievements for Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots. These include All I Need is the Boots! (Get a Critical hit with a Tomato), Vivo Gato (Slice 500 Fruit Total), Not That Desperate (Get a score of 200 in Desperado without losing a life), among others. As you earn achievements, a small window will appear on your screen telling you what you did. There is plenty of fun to be had slicing and dicing your way to success. Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots is strangely addicting. You never want to put the game down. Just a few more fruits to get. The gameplay is very intuitive to play and simple.

No two games that I played were alike. The smaller the fruit, or the closer to the bombs it was, the harder it was to hit. Fruit Ninja can be played if you have 5 minutes or 5 hours. I found that I enjoyed Bandito mode, as having a time limit added an extra bit of excitement to beat the clock. The availability of different types of blades and backgrounds allows you to vary the game and personalize it to your tastes.

The only thing I kept forgetting to do was to slice through the fruits and not just tap it. A gauntleted hand would show up and tell me to slice through the fruit. The graphics, while not perfectly lifelike, are close enough that you can tell what each fruit is. The juices that splatter the background when you slice them, as well as the slice marks left by your knife, adds to the game’s appeal.

Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots is a cut above the rest.

Danip
Platform: iPhone 4
Rated 4+
Compatible w/ iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Developer: Halfbrick Studios
Publisher: Halfbrick Studios
Price: $.99 ($1.99 iPad)

Halfbrick Studio’s Website

Review Score
Graphics
While not perfectly realistic, close enough that you could tell what each fruit was.
Sound
Fit the game very well and adds to the overall experience.
Gameplay
Very intuitive and easy to learn Starts out easy and gets harder as you go along.

Overall
Fun game that anyone can play; can be very addictive. Well worth owning for everyone.