10 Second Ninja X (2016)

• Overview: I enjoyed this game for a solid 30 minutes. After that it becomes extremely challenging, and while I get that some people enjoy that, challenge is not the only thing I look for in a game. I'm frankly astonished at all the good reviews, as this is basically a flash game with 100 levels and a fresh coat of paint.

• Steam Features:
  • Achievements: Yes
  • Trading Cards: Yes
  • Workshop: No
  • Steam Deck Support: No

• User Interface: ★★★☆☆
• Art Design: ★★★☆☆
• Sound Design: ★★☆☆☆
• Game Mechanics: ★★★☆☆
• Lore & Narrative: ★☆☆☆☆
• Novelty: ★★☆☆☆

• Completion:
  • Story: No
  • Achievements: 0/12
  • 100%: No

Played this as a part of PS Plus subscription on my PS4.

It's a sequel to 10 Second Ninja, a game that was released back in 2014, with same core mechanic and concept, this time however Robot Hitler is replaced with a pirate captain called Greatbeard. All of the 40 levels from the original game have been remastered and are included in this release.

Premise is simple, you need to destroy all robots in a level with only 10 seconds on the clock, the faster you do it, the better star rating you are going get and you need stars to unlock next levels.

Gameplay is tight, controls are responsive and the game itself is very addictive thanks to its brutal difficulty and quick restarts after you die. It operates on the same plane as Super Meat Boy does, but with added 10 seconds time limit in every level.

Ultimately this is what pushed me away from it - the do-over nature got tiring relatively quickly for me and its infuriatingly difficult skill-barrier at one point in the game almost caused my Dual Shock controller to perish in my hands, after I failed what must have been my 50th try at beating one of the levels with 3-star rating. Every jump, every shuriken throw, every swing of the sword must be spot on, otherwise you will fail. And you only have 10 seconds.

On top of that, when I was probably half-way through the game, gaining a nice momentum and a confidence boost, my save file got corrupted and I lost all the progress. All of it. It was then that I decided to drop it. There was no way I was going to go through this torture again.

It is most certainly at its best when played in small doses and only if you enjoy a real tough challenge. Otherwise avoid. It might look pretty, with clear environments and small enemies, but it's all deception. 10 Seconds Ninja X is brutal. I hate it more than I hate my ex for what it has done to my calm persona.

I don't know if it's just me, but I found it super addicting to try and get three stars on every level for this game. Because it was so easy to restart a level and each level was so short, I obsessively repeated each level until I got three stars until I ultimately got three stars on all 100 of the main levels. The controls were pretty smooth and it was kind of fun to figure out the best path to get the fasted time on a level.

However, I didn't find completing each level, or even all 100 levels, that satisfying, unlike Hotline Miami which I recently played and also obsessively repeated levels to get through. Each stage was so small and ultimately pretty simple once you worked it out, that once you knew what to do it was just a matter of doing it as quickly as possible to win. I know that's kind of the whole point of 10 Second Ninja but it leaves you with no real payoff other then being able to say you got all the stars, which isn't so hard to do, especially when some of the later, more complex levels actually seemed to be more lax with the time limits so you had more spare time to get the three stars than in earlier levels.

I was able to fully complete all 100 levels in just under three hours of playtime, which sounds like a lot when each level is a maximum of 10 seconds long, but for any game in general that seems really short to get 100% completion of the main part of the game. I didn't finish the legacy levels or the marathon levels though but by the time I got to them I had kind of gotten bored. Not to mention there tries to be a storyline but the actual story part is over so quickly you can't even get invested in it if you want to. Your main goal will be to get a good time on all the levels, not to advance the story and so the story seems kind of tacked on and almost an inconvenience so you want to rush through the cut scenes so you can get back to zooming through stages.

That's not to say this is a really bad game that wasn't enjoyable at all – it was fun for a while and I'm sure it's probably more fun for people who enjoy trying to speedrun it and compete with others to get the best time. The problem with that is there seems to be a glitch with the leaderboard where sometimes loading the leaderboard literally crashes the game. The first time I got this error I looked it up and it seems others have had the same problem, and since the leaderboard is automatically shown in the level selection areas I could literally ONLY play this game by turning off the Wi-fi first and playing offline so the leaderboard wouldn't crash the game. It wasn't that much of an inconvenience but seems like a pretty big flaw. Also for the short time before that when the leaderboard wasn't crashing my game I have to say I'm a little skeptical with some of the times people got to get first place in some of the levels lol like how is it even possible to finish in less than a second lol but maybe I'm just an amateur lmao.

This game is free on Steam until May 28 at 1 p.m. although I'm unsure of the time zone so if you want it I'd say just make sure to download it by May 27 lol. I think it's worth installing for free and trying out but it's not a must-have, probably just more worth getting it when it's free rather than paying for it. Also warning, there are flashing lights, the game gives a warning for this before it starts and there's an option to reduce or I'm assuming completely remove them, although I never changed the settings myself. I didn't notice the flashing lights until for some reason just during my last session I actually did get a headache from them and realized they happen every time you hit an enemy. Maybe the last levels I was playing had a lot of enemies being hit at once with my shuriken (or maybe it's a throwing knife?) or I was just repeating them more than usual but I was surprised because flashing lights in games don't usually affect me. Just a heads up in case you're worried it's probably worth going into the options and turning those down or off.