Ninja Assassin the movie is an anticipated Hollywood swords and sandals epic from James McTeigue, director of V for Vendetta, with a story from J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and the only Spider-Man comic in which Dr. Doom cries (though the artist allegedly came up with that last bit).
It’s also now an iPhone game, and a quite nicely produced one, at that. It might, in fact, be the bloodiest game to ever come to the platform, if that’s your thing. Seriously — you get measured on the number of successful decapitations per level.
What works best about Ninja Assassin for iPhone is its simplicity in concept and execution. Your character is a ninja. You don’t really learn his name, and he wears a mask, so it doesn’t matter. He’s there to cut stuff up with his sword. And that’s most of what you can do. Rather than use an on-screen controller or similar, the entire game is played through finger swipes and taps. If you want to run to the right, you swipe right. If you want to cut someone in half, you swipe through them. If you want to jump, you swipe up, etc.
For the most part, this is a highly effective system. The gameplay is extremely fluid (no slowdowns at all on my 3GS), and the controls are responsive. It almost felt, at times, as if the screen could tell where I was going to touch before I actually did. The team at Warner Bros. did a really nice job there — thought and action are well-synced. Similarly, the graphics are gorgeous, a nice cel-shaded polygon look in 2-D that lends a loose, liquid texture to the visuals. The depth of field is equally impressive in many fields.
But graphics and controls have never a game made, and the longevity of Ninja Assassin is somewhat doubtful. I got bored of the solo mission at the very first boss, a tall maniac with a chainsaw defended by two dudes with handguns who repeatedly chopped me to bits. As it turns out, when your enemies aren’t easily fooled thugs, it’s a huge handicap for movement and attacks to use the same motion. Lacking the ability to jump and then slice with any finesse, I pretty much just kept getting ground up.
Survival mode is quite a bit more fun, essentially placing you in a battle royale to see how many enemies you can kill before you yourself succumb. It has a lot less strategy and a whole lot more frantic action, and it’s a highly diverting thing to play on the train.
One last feature I should mention: the game allows you to replace its soundtrack with your own iPod library, which can be used for dramatic effect if you’re putting in, say, Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto, or comedic effect if you accompany the sounds and sight of yourself getting disemboweled with a chainsaw with the folky strains of the Magnetic Fields’ “Abigail, Belle of Kilronan.” Almost worth the $5 just as a party trick for friends and family.
