Nobody would want to catch this gingerbread man.

Ninjabread Man, just the name alone would catch the attention of many people, but who would blame them; it sounds like a great concept for a game, a gingerbread man that’s a ninja sounds awesome. In the story, that wolf would have never ate the gingerbread man if he was a ninja. Now I was curious and never heard of this developer before, so I looked at the screenshots at the back of the box and it looked decent, so I found it cheap and played it, and once I finished the game, I thought it was one of the worst games I have ever played.

Story:
According to the back of the box art, Candy Land is under attack by Hordes of snapping cupcakes, angry bees, and jelly monsters that have taken over the land. Ninjabread Man must stop the evil army of monster cakes. None of this was ever explained in the game, I guess they thought if they just explain it all to you on the back of the box, that they wouldn’t have to tell you in the game, the story itself is also a lie, it’s more like Ninjabread man is invading the candy monsters territory to complete his goal, if they were to at least show some gingerbread men running for their lives, then the story would make much more sense.

Gameplay:
Ninjabread man is a 3D platformer where you must take control of our cookie hero and collect 8 power rods to activate a telaporter and make it to the next level, but Ninjabread man must also fight the evil candy monsters that are preventing him from completing his goals because…………well, that was still never explained. NinjaBread man can defend himself with his sword and ninja stars, but most of the time, you’ll be using ninja stars, but I’ll explain that later. When an enemy is defeated, they will leave behind a heart with wings that will fly away if you don’t collect it in time, each flying heart will replenish a health point, represented by hearts, if you collect enough hearts without getting hit, then you’ll earn yourself a one-up.

Controls:
The controls in this game are just awful, especially if you are going to use the motion controls, but if you use the button controls, then this game is somewhat more playable. You can make Ninjabread man run around with the nunchuk, and if you shake the nunchuk, the he can jump, but most of the time, it barley works, thankfully, you can use the z button in lieu of shaking the nunchuk, but this was never explained in the tutorial level, so you would have to had figured that out by yourself. To make Ninjabread man swing his sword, you have to swing your wii-mote, while this has a better response than the nunchuk control, it’s not that much better, sometimes it doesn’t work at all, so using the sword might not be such a good idea if you want to fight enemies, because they can all be near you and you sit there helpless trying to swing your sword, and before you know it, you’re dead. Ninjabread man can also throw ninja stars at the enemies by aiming the wii-mote in that direction, which is represented by a reticle, then you press the A button to throw the stars, this is the better way of attacking the enemies, as you have unlimited ammo and can hit certain enemies that the sword cannot. You can control the camera with the d-pad, but with a camera this bad, why would you bother.

Levels:
There are only 4 levels in Ninjabread man, and that’s including the tutorial level, and the length of these levels aren’t that long, so you could beat this game in under 45 minutes. The game starts you off in the tutorial level, or should I say, training dojo, and you go run around the area with a random pop up telling you what to do, you’ll have to collect certificates to go on to the next part of your training, once you collect enough, then you can actually go into a level, congratulations Ninjabread man, you just completed a quarter of the game in just 5 minutes. Next there’s the lollipop forest, where there’s hardly any lollipops at all. Then there’s candy cliffs, which is more like a long trail going up to somewhere boring. And last but not least, there’s cookie caves, which is a cave with hot jelly (that’s what they called it, but it still looks like lava) with cookies you can jump on, and then that’s it, nothing more, there’s no ending or even the credits, but you must choose the credits on the main menu, also, it says that you completed 100% of the game already, so playing the other modes will unlock nothing.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game are mediocre, while there not the worst graphics ever, they certainly aren’t the greatest either, but this a port of a PS2/PC game, so the graphics could have a least improved a litte, but they didn’t. The levels are all colorful, but can feel dull, especially if you go into a cave. The background looks like wallpaper that sort of moves to the left, but that’s because slowly, it’s falling off the wall. Ninjabread man looks and animates decently, but nothing to special, same goes for the enemies.

Sound:
The music in this game all upbeat and cheerful, but it kinda goes with the games setting, I understand that the game takes place in a colorful candy place, but the music should have been more about action, since Ninjabread man is all serious looking, battling enemies to complete his goal…………..whatever that might be. Ninjabreadman makes small grunts when attacking and you can hear that through the Wii-mote, he also makes small grunts when getting hit and dying. The enemies also makes nosies, but if you pass by the bee’s, then you’ll be forced to hear there annoying buzzing, the only way to make that stop is to kill them or run away.

Difficulty:
The game is not really that hard at all, while the controls and camera might make things harder, it’s still not that much of a challenge.

Replayability:
Once you complete this game, there’s hardly a reason to replay the game at all, there’s some other modes like time attack and score pickups, but it’s basically the same thing as playing the normal game, also just playing the normal game will 100% everything, so the other modes won’t add or change anything at all. I actually replayed all the levels again in the different files, hoping to unlock an extra bonus level or some concept art, but once I did that, I unlocked nothing, what a waste of time that was.

Overall:
Ninjabread man is just not fun, it’s hardly playable and it’s just not worth your time or money. It’s a shame the name Ninjabread man went to waste, because this could have been the next big video game franchise or at least could have been a decent game, but instead, we have a game that was left in the oven for too long and tastes terrible, if you play this game, it’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth, because all the time you were playing Ninjabread man, you could have spent that time playing a better game, do not play this game, unless your into stale cookies. Also, this was supposed to be a new entry in the Zool series, but due to poor quality of this game, the Zool license was dropped, whoever dropped the license, you made the right choice.
1/10