Ninja vs Sumo

There are a number of “Who would win out of…?” questions that have been around since the dawn of time but sadly have remained unanswered.

Take for example Superman versus Supergirl, The Beast and The Incredible Hulk, King Kong and Godzilla and Ninja vs. Sumo. Well alright, perhaps the last isn’t high on everyone’s list, but the producers have made a rather compelling case where you can influence the outcome.

You get to pick your side, either being ‘Kanjiro’ Ninja or ‘Teji’ Sumo wrestlers and then have to prove who’s the best by eliminating the opposition in a ‘best of three’ scenario.

Say if you choose to be the Ninja for example, the game begins by placing a number of Sumo wrestlers at various random positions in the bottom half of the screen. The idea of the game is to use your descending ninjas (who come in various colours) and surround your opponent. When you get three of the same colour to surround the desired sumo wrestler, they’ll automatically ambush and delete both themselves and the opposing piece.

This is quite a challenge to do without making any mistake as unfortunately should you link up any of the three (or more) same coloured pieces (either vertically, horizontally or diagonally), they’ll eliminate themselves – damaging your score and depleting your strength. Should you do this a few times you’ll automatically lose the round.

This game really tests your skill, puzzle solving ability, reactions and speed. You have to try and solve the rounds by manoeuvring your descending pair of ninjas or sumo wrestlers. From my experience you should try and work from the top down wherever possible, as trying to build up from the bottom of the screen can easily become undone by one mistake under pressure. If there’s one thing that I quickly learned, that strategy can soon unravel into total chaos if you aren’t lucky. On more than one instance I managed to kill myself and lose the round and indeed game by trying to be too cunning and accidentally undoing all my hard work when trying to build my bridge of men from the bottom of the screen – as I’d end up making a critical error.

The only bad thing that I can really say about this game is that it doesn’t really have as much addictiveness as I was hoping for. When playing the game I won quite a few times and also lost a few times, but unless you’re really keen to prove that Ninjas or indeed Sumo wrestlers are better than the other, there’s only really a handful of times you can get stuck into this game. As there’s only three rounds to prove one way or another that you’re better than the AI, and no real reward for winning (e.g. unlocking new levels, new designs, new mini-games etc.) it all gets quite repetitive.

Having said that, if you’ve got a few minutes to kill and like to solve puzzles then this game should definitely feature on your shopping list.

Rating 64%

Positives

Cute idea and graphics

Challenging but fun

Negatives

No rewards for your efforts other than a high score

Very repetitive

Difficulty level can’t be changed