Fruit Ninja VR
SHORT REVIEW: PS4 VR
Ninjas come in many guises. This Ninja is a fruit Ninja. This Ninja is very silly.
Blah, Blah Blah, words. Just have a looksie…
It’s the same ol’ Fruit Ninja cluttering up your phone, jazzed up and re-purposed for your VR pleasure.
We ask the important question… Does it work?
The answer is yes.
So, you know Fruit Ninja right? Instead of swiping your finger across your phone, you get to slice and dice with a bloody big Samurai sword. A simple concept you’d agree, but it suits virtual reality perfectly. Ready for action, clutching two swords you await your natural enemy. Fruit, bombs and time.
Chop, Chop.
It’s bright, cheerful and brilliantly squelchy as you reenact fruit Yojimbo to the horror of watching guests. So why are you waving your arms around like a lunatic? You gain lovely juicy points within 4 different game modes. Classic mode is the game you’ve played on your phone. Cut fruit an’ don’t stab pesky bombs. Arcade mode gives you 60 seconds to rack up the highest score possible, which is tremendous fun. You can guess Zen mode. Survival introduces flying drones that coughs fruit into your face. This mode inspires white guy Ninja stance and bellowing roars of victory.
The head tracking is excellent and dual wielding the notoriously pernickety Move controllers is a pleasure.
I rock two different camera set-ups, depending on the type of VR game. I’ve the bog standard, camera sitting above the television, which works fine for most sit down experiences. For your Batman standing experiences I precariously place the camera wayyyy above my TV, facing downward so the Move lights don’t interfere with the headset tracking.
I’m happy to report you can play Fruit Ninja VR with the camera sitting above the television without any light tracking issues. I was able to wave the swords in front of my face. Impressive, I hope they share their secrets with other developers. As with all new games ever I did encounter the odd minor bug. I had to reset the game soon after booting, as my left arm become sentient. Turning it off and on did the trick. Oh VR, you cheeky scamp.
I absolutely love chopping fruit with dual Katanas. Tiny jabs, wild arching swings, wind-milling. The crusty ol’ Move technology keeps up with your feral movements. I daresay, this might be the best example of the Move technology in action. Watching a bomb bounce harmlessly off my sword inspired a chuckle, swiping my fallen pith enemy from the floor, is quite amazing.
Unfortunately there are no swords to unlock and no additional secrets or modes find. You can’t smugly compare score to your friends, which is a tad rotten as that’s all the game is. I’ve no doubt this will arrive in the form of a patch, but c’mon, who wants to compare scores with some unknown lunatic. Some form of Headmaster pass-the-VR multiplayer would have been nice. Anything extra would have been nice.
For I am combo master! HEAR ME ROAR!
Fruit Ninja VR is a perfected basic game. The fundamentals are rock solid.
Set in a single area with 4 similar game modes at your disposal, you could argue the price doesn’t justify the return. That’s a hard question to resolve, but I’d say this. Fruit Do-dah VR is a great introduction to VR and provides plenty of fun. You could easily feel short changed after dropping £13.99 on it. It’s not a Driveclub filled to the brim with content, it’s not online. Fruit Ninja VR is merely a simple score attack game. So consider this your warning.
Fruit Ninja VR is the perfect introduction to waving your arms in the style of an angry Daffy Duck. How much you get from it depends on whether or not you want to show off VR and how much you enjoy beating your score. Personally I’m content to slice fruit into bits.
A few extra modes and unlockables wouldn’t go amiss, as I fear some people could tire of this simple premise rather quickly.