An insult to pirates and ninjas everywhere
It’s a question everyone wants an answer to: Are pirates or ninjas better, and what better way to settle it than a nice game of dodgeball? Pirates vs Ninjas dodgeball is an xbox live arcade title featuring pirates and ninjas (and zombies and robots), all playing dodgeball against each other to show who’s best. Sounds like a great idea, and it would be if the game didn’t fail on so many levels.
Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball (or PvND from this point on) offers 3 sets of game rules: Combat dodgeball, Enhanced dodgeball, and Traditional dodgeball, although none of them are like any dodgeball you might have played in school, and to be honest there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the rule sets. There are also 3 different game modes to choose from: Exhibition, Story Mode and Multiplayer. Exhibition and Multiplayer are fairly obvious, Story Mode is the main single player mode but the “story” is not much to speak of, just a simple text and still-pictures affair, and just sets the scene for a series of battles which get increasingly harder and with more players in the arena from 2v2 to 4v4.
Sounds like a great idea, and it would be if the game didn’t fail on so many levels.
PvND suffers from many problems, but probably the biggest one is the incredibly bad camera angle. of the four arenas available to play in, they all have obstacles/trees/etc that get between the camera and the character you are controlling making it very hard to navigate around. Couple this with the twitchy controls and it becomes a nightmare trying to pick up the ball when it is at the edge of the screen.
Actually, it’s a nightmare to pick up the ball anywhere because the second biggest problem is as I’ve just mentioned – the twitchy controls. A lot of the time I found myself running circles round the ball trying to pick it up until I got another ball to the head and was stunned. Catching or countering balls that are thrown at you is also next to impossible as the timing required is insanely tight, not to mention the fact that it’s usually pretty damn hard to work out if there’s a ball headed your way. Also, while it is possible to change the player you are controlling at any one time, it seems that control is randomly switched about as well, which can leave you spending nearly an entire game wondering exactly which player you were supposed to be in control of.
Next on the list of criticisms is the AI. I think the best way I could describe it would be inconsistent. Winning a match seems to come purely down to luck and not skill, as the enemy AI has a nasty tendency to team up on you and unleash a barrage of special attacks which leave you constantly stunned. And of course the AI of your team-mates is particularly poor meaning there is no chance for the kind of coordination seen by the enemy, and you will quickly find yourself alone battling against the entire opposing team as all your team-mates are knocked out of the game.
After all that negativity, is there anything good I can say about PvND? Well… It looks quite nice. The graphics are quite cute if nothing particularly special, although it’s a shame you don’t really see much of the characters due to the camera being so far away from the action. Sound is ok but not impressive so I won’t say anything more about it.
To sum up, don’t waste your money unless you like being constantly frustrated. It was a nice idea but Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball just doesn’t deliver.
The Bad: Poorly executed, bad camera angles, bad controls, bad gameplay
