It’s time to draw the blades and plug in the juicer. Halfbrick Studios are back with another fruit-slicing game, this time exclusively on Xbox One. Known as Fruit Ninja Kinect 2, this is the sequel to one of the most popular Kinect games ever made, Fruit Ninja Kinect back on Xbox 360. This time, you’ll have all the games original content plus five brand new modes at your disposal, all with the next-generation precision of the Kinect for Xbox One.
Some of the major changes from the original include an all-new cast of characters, five new gameplay modes, four-person multiplayer, new swag items in the store and online leaderboard. The menu has received an upgrade to feel elegant when navigating and this time, there’s new challenges with a progression system that offers unlocks and rewards. All this, plus the games original features and 1,000 Gamerscore makes for the best Fruit Ninja experience to date.
Unlike the original game, this time you get a setting and story with characters and location. The Fruit Ninja team consists of Katsuro, Mari, Han and Nobu and with them, you’ll be exploring the Blueberry Moon festival. Each character features their own unique game in the festival including dodging shurikens, slashing forest bamboo and becoming the ultimate stealth master all while slicing as must fruit as possible and avoiding the nasty bombs. All these unlockable missions are found in the ‘Festival’ area on the menu. Like the original, you get all the classic Fruit Ninja modes you know and love; Arcade, Zen and Classic and these are found in the ‘Quickplay’ section.
As I previously mentioned, this is a Kinect title so I’ll be looking into a number of extra factors for this review. These include the distance you have to stand back from your Kinect, the accuracy of the sensor and precision in gestures. My initial impressions were like most Kinect titles on Xbox One, very accurate and requires little room space. However, when you’re playing this game, it will tell you to “step backwards” if you’re around 1.5m from Kinect even though the sensor is accurately picking you up. This is an annoyance within the game, however it doesn’t prevent you from playing, thankfully. Kinect feels very precise to play with for this kind of game, with controls almost identical to what was on the Xbox 360 version. Both of your arms acts as swords which you use to slice the fruit. Minimal space is required, however I would recommend ensuring you can stretch both your left and right arms out without hitting into objects or the wall. I’ve never once had the issue where what was sliced on screen was misinterpreted, meaning the tracking is spot-on. Pausing the game is simple, all you need to do is ‘bow’ to the Kinect. Literally.
The game features a ranking system and you must level up to unlock each of the characters’ quests. Each game you play will have three unique challenges and once you complete one, you unlock a token piece. Once you reach three of these, you’ll level up and unlock the next quest. Players also get coloured belts as they rank up. The challenges can be tricky sometimes, or will require you to grind but only for a short while. There will be three challenges for each game you play. Every time you finish a round, you’ll also earn a score based on your performance. The higher the score, the more ‘stars’ you get and these stars can be used to buy new items at the ‘Swag’ shop. Here you’ll find new blades, backgrounds and shadows. If you want a lot of these, this is where you’ll find the game’s biggest grind. As of writing this, I still don’t have enough to buy the games cheapest sword, which costs 1,000 stars.
Multiplayer has received huge upgrades from its predecessor. However, it’s all local play with no online play. There’s competitive and cooperative modes with mini-games, jump in/jump out action and new power-ups. The party modes here are new to Fruit Ninja including Ninja Poses where players have to strike a series of poses and match the ones shown on screen. Balloon Popping makes you use accuracy to pop balloons with razor sharp shurikens and Pomegranate Slicing involves players going all out to get the highest number of hits on a pomegranate before it explodes. The battle mode where you fight with your friends for the highest score has new power-up bananas. The Mini Fruit is used to shrink your opponents fruit for a small period of time, Fast Forward makes your opponents fruit faster and therefore harder to hit while the Bomb Attack causes bombs to appear in front of your opponent. Obviously here, you’re going to need a lot more room space and stand further back from the Kinect.
Brand new to Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 is when you’re playing a solo game, a player also has the ability to join you by just waving towards the Kinect. They join you instantly for a cooperative experience to help you slice more fruit, earn a larger score, complete challenges and of course, earn more stars so you can buy swag from the store. Another new experience added to the solo game is the Jumbo Fruit power-up banana which increase the size of all fruit for a limited time. They look pretty large on your screen!
Want to be ahead of your friends? Of course you do. The game includes leaderboards which can be filtered for each of the games classic and new modes. I’m currently quite high-up in each of them and in the top ten for many however, that’s going to change once everyone in the community starts playing. Leader-boards can be filtered to show the top scores, how you stack up against your friends and where you’re placed on the global leaderboard.
If you like playing games while having something like TV or Netflix snapped, you’re going to have a huge issue with Fruit Ninja Kinect 2. You cannot play the game when you have another game/app snapped on the side of your screen. I found this an odd experience as I have never seen a game undergo this behaviour before. I noticed this when I snapped ‘Achievements’ to view my progress, after I unsnapped I could return to playing, but it is a nuisance if you like doing two things at once.
It’s clear that Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 makes for one of the best Kinect games on Xbox One. However, that isn’t a hard task with so few games fully using the sensor for input control. The game does have replay value, meaning you will come back to it several times. Nevertheless, it can become repetitive and it isn’t something you could play for hours in a row. I always believe that these kind of games are most enjoyable in short period bursts rather than long sessions. Still, the precise tracking in this title, range of game modes, easy controls and multiplayer experiences makes this a Kinect game well worth picking up. Especially when it only costs $14.99. Therefore, I’m honoured to give Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 a well-deserved 7.5/10!
Alan is a games journalist, head writer at AR12Gaming. They contributed 2 articles to ICXM in 2015, focused on game reviews, and Xbox news: now lead writer at AR12Gaming.