Console: iOS
Date Released: 4/26/ 12
Date Reviewed: 5/12/ 12
Reviewer: Reid
Pros
* Unique art direction
* Easy, responsive controls
* Challenging and unique play-throughs
Cons
* Music is a continuous loop
* Fingers get in the way of seeing incoming objects
Shuriken Chicken is a ‘run and gun’ type game for the iOS in which the main character jumps and slides to avoid obstacles and throws Shurikens to avoid enemies. Running to see how far you can get is the main challenge of the game.
Presentation : A
Graphics / Animation / Sound
Right off the bat this games art style is eye-catching. According to their developers statement and pictures on their website, “all graphics were hand cut from felt and photographed”. This immediately sets it apart from anything I’ve seen or played on iOS and gives a cool aspect to the depth perception of the background. This process helps fill out the simple nature of the game-play and kept me interested to see what was coming next on my screen.
Playing Shuriken Chicken through shows off all kinds of animations going on at least 5 or so layers deep. There is an impressive amount of content on your screen being animated all at once, and I never noticed any lag or distraction from my main goal of running as far as I could. The smoothness of the animation shows how much time they put into making the game, and it’s something to appreciate.
The sound effects are few but appropriate for what is going on in-game. The music, as far as I have come across, only consists of a small loop of guitars. As rockin’ as they are, they do become repetitive. And like most iOS games, you can turn sound and sound effects off in the main menu.
Single Player : B
Game mechanics / Length / difficulty
Shuriken Chicken is straight forward, as soon as you hit play your off to the races. No story or true ending, just arcade style play, where instead of working towards a high score, you are accumulating distance. The game lets you know you need to swipe up to jump, swipe down to slide, and tap the screen to throw your Shurikens on your first play. Though the moves are responsive, the problem with these types of games are the objects come at you so fast that some times your fingers will obstruct your screen. This has cost me a few lives, but it is better than having built-in controls on the screen, so you can try different hand positions to try to maximize your view of what is coming at you.
You have three lives (hearts) touching anything on the screen will cost you one, and once you use them all you have to start over. You can replenish your lost hearts or even add to them, and you can also earn new weapons to use. Your main Shuriken is unlimited, but the new weapons you earn do have a limited supply. You can earn weapons like the ‘laser shuriken’ or the ‘triple shot shuriken’ which are interesting, but since enemies only take one shot to kill it doesn’t necessarily improve your progress other than taking a few enemies out at the same time. Since you can shoot as fast as you can tap, and in any direction, grabbing other weapons could prove only a distraction.
I noticed a small pattern towards the beginning of every play, but there are small enough changes of randomly generated spikes or enemies to keep the game-play enticing enough to keep trying for a new best distance.
The game is as long as you can make it, and the difficulty does increase over distance by putting obstacles closer together.
Multiplayer : –
Game mechanics / features / Online features
There is no multiplayer, but there is a leader board with other people who play the game. According to the leader board I’m #9 all time with a distance of 1,553 meters before dying. Go ahead, try to beat me. Muahahah. *cough*.
Replay Value : B
Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC
Shuriken Chicken will last you as long as you are interested in playing. Because there is no story or real motivation besides going the distance it does become just a time killer after awhile…but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.
Right now there is no DLC but there are 32 achievements you can earn throughout the game. So I guess another way to play the game is try for the achievements. The hardest to get will be to run a total of 5,000 meters before losing all your lives. I guess that would probably signal that you have beat the game, but the #1 on the leader board as of this review has run 5,523 meters, so that could be more motivation. Good luck though :).
There are a few types of games like Shuriken Chicken on the iOS. I’ve played quite a few of them. Though in-game mechanics differ very little between them, the fact that so much time has gone into the quality of the presentation of this game definitely deserves some of your time. Especially at the price point of $0.99.
I can recommend this game. It is easy to jump in and out of, and provides a fun challenge if you like the side-scrolling ‘run and gun’ style game.
Overall : A
