Ninja Reflex

Found this title and was hoping it would be a good martial arts sim for my daughter...NOT REALLY!

Will only have repeat play appeal to real hardcore ninja afficiandos. From catching flies with chopsticks, throwing stars at inanimate attackers, to deflecting household objects with your nunchuks (don't even get me started with what you do to the FIREflies), this is all "wax on, wax off" and NO "sweep the leg". Which makes you wonder what you're practing for in the first place?! All in all, its about as much fun as flipping burgers and bussing tables with Chachi and Ralph Malf at Arnolds.

Sayanora and better luck next time Mr. Miyagi!

I enjoy the martial arts, and I thought this game had a decent approach - learn martial arts skills without violence. It's not a very good game though.

The game is basically broken up into 6 minigames, with slight restrictions based on what particular form of a game you're playing. For instance, in the first Koi game, you catch as many fish as you can. in the second, you need to catch one particular fish. In the third, you catch fish as they swim across the screen. So on and so forth. For every belt rank, you need to recomplete each of these games at a slightly harder difficulty level, and then again during your belt test. All of these are incredibly easy (with the exception of the Katana games, which I find are very unresponsive to the wiimote), even for me, a really out-of-practice video gamer. I ended up as a blue belt (about 2/3 of the way to black belt) in less than an hour.

It has some interesting options, like the naming system, and the meditation system which expects you to actually go along with what Sensei is saying via guided meditation, or just a simple soothing music background while you go it alone. It's completely optional, but it is a pretty unique feature.

Overall, once you spend about 2 hours, you'll start to wonder when you'll find something new. Unfortunately, you'll have almost the entire thing unlocked in about 45 minutes. That really puts a damper on the gameplay.

This is my daughter's review: "The game is great, but I think the stars are hard to throw. But the game is fun to play. I am 8 years old in second grade." Sally in PA

I was very disappointed by how little there is to do in this game. Basically there are 4 different mini-games that you play and each only last a couple of minutes. That is it. I know... I know... you are thinking that there has to be more than that, right? But there isn't.

This is your only option in the WII platform of a martial arts game without violence. That's why I've to give 4 stars but Nintendo have done better jobs in the past (NES system). What I liked:

1 - You have to make Nunchaku movements to make it works (good use of WII mote)
2- You can learn 3 basic movements of the Katana (good use of WII mote)
3 - Fishing is a peaceful activity and the comment about the educational thing of meditation is true.
You don't learn any fighting skill without weapons and the comments posted about mini games are true. For kids is good, for a more mature people don't pay to much.