Nakama – Review
When you think ninja fighting, you probably envision Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, that guy from Kill Bill. They all have perfect control and swift fluid movements. Nakama feels more like Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja, clunky, slow and as the credits roll you are left with an empty feeling inside. Nakama has a lot of things going for it, the popular 8Bit graphics, compatibility with 3rd party controllers and bad guys with throwing stars. But it falls short due to its strange learning curve and the ability to put ninja fighting in the same league as a bar fight in your local town.
You are the last Shinobi of your village, and nasty enemy ninjas are out to make sure that you go for good. As you bobble to the right, each level consists of a couple of screens of generic ninjas to take out, before you have to fight against a different boss.
Nakama’s controls should be relatively simple. You have an A and B button, allowing you to jump and slash, in some cases you can jump and slash at the same time. You can use these to go from left to right, jumping and slashing enemies.
The major problem is that as enemies come into contact with you, they instantly start knocking you to the side of the screen, hurting you over and over again. At first this is nothing major, but the deeper into the game you go, the harder it gets and can become very annoying.
When you complete a level, you save a companion. These then fight beside you, thats great until 5 levels in you have little blobs that all look alike jumping around an shalshing. You end up not knowing which ones is you, this caused a lot of deaths for me.
The difficulty for levels go up and down. I had some issues with the 3rd and 4th levels, yet I blasted through 5 and 6 with no problems. I have read that if you simply hide at the side of the screen and let your companions do all the work, grabbing health every now and again to keep them alive, you can beat the game a lot more easily.
The whole game is very short, clocking in at around 30 mins total playtime required. This makes me wonder if this game is a waste of time and not actually worth a download.
The pixelated visuals are fun and pretty, as is the backgrounds and slashing motion. Its main issues are the controls and the gameplay.
Download Nakama below:
