Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of 10 Second Ninja X. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.
What can you do in ten seconds? If the answer isn't beat up a bunch of robots and save your forrest friends….you may want to try harder. Such is the nature of Game Design Dan's Ten Second Ninja X, the pseudo-sequel/rerelease/reboot to the original release from a few years ago. It's a deceptively tough platformer that doesn't just ask for perfection it demands it of you. There's a limit to that though and Ten Second Ninja doesn't seem to understand it and before long the rewarding feeling you get from completing a stage gives way to annoyance and anger. At it's bargain bin price Ten Second Ninja X is definitely worth checking out as long as you have patience.
Ten Second Ninja X doesn't try to romanticize what it is. You're a ninja and you have ten seconds to get through each stage; it's really that simple. Jump over objects, destroy enemy robots and save your friends that have become hostages from an evil guy who is definitely not Dr. Robotnik (spoiler alert: he looks a lot like Dr. Robotnik). While the premise is simple, the execution is not. Your ten second time limit is a short one and the game demands perfection at every step in order to be successful. You're going to be looking at how to shave milliseconds off of your time any chance you can. Do you start jumping just a bit earlier? Or maybe you do the opposite and fall a bit before jumping in order to clear an obstacle. Decisions like these are at the core of the Ten Second Ninja experience and it's remarkably rewarding when you figure out how to beat your time.
That is of course until you realize that Ten Second Ninja doesn't know when to quit. Not only does the game require you to complete stages in the ten second time limit but you'll eventually have to go back to get a better time on past stages if you want to keep advancing. Now, Ten Second Ninja isn't the first game to do this but when each stage is so short to begin with and taking one wrong step often means having to start over it can be pretty frustrating. Ten Second Ninja X feels like it's built like a mobile game; it's quick, it's fun and begs for you to go back and try to get a better score (the game even uses the same star based scoring system that so many mobile games do) but there's a big difference between a game I want to play on my phone, say on a train ride to work and game that I want to sit in front of my TV screen with and actually care about.
That simplicity that makes the majority of Ten Second Ninja X so much fun permeates through the game nearly the entire time you're playing. Take the controls for instance, you can run, jump slash your sword and throw shurkiens but the trick comes from finding the right combination to use them. I will say this about Ten Second Ninja though, and please understand I do not say this lightly; playing through the game I was often reminded of my favorite game of all time, Super Meat Boy. Ten Second Ninja is not as good as Team Meat's masterpiece but there are elements similar elements here like the constant restarting to get a better time and the (mostly) superb platforming controls. The true mark of any great platformer is how many times I tell myself…or my wife "just one more time" before playing for another forty-five minutes and Ten Second Ninja has that.
If you've been looking for a game that you don't have to invest much time in to get you through the summer months you may want to look at Ten Second Ninja X. It requires patience and more patience to be successful but when you are it's extremely rewarding. You'll have to be okay with playing the same levels over and over but if you are Ten Second Ninja X is easily worth the bargain price of admission.
