E3 2011 Hands-On: Fruit Ninja Kinect

Anyone who is interested in mobile gaming has at least heard of, if not played Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja. Fruit Ninja sliced its way onto the mobile gaming site in April of last year. Numerous updates later and a release on the Android marketplace, Fruit Ninja has gathered a cult following. How do I know this? I saw a shirt at Hot Topic. That’s like a right of passage with these kids these days, right? Anyway, Halfbrick has something new planned for the Fruit Ninja franchise, and what better way to slice fruit using the Kinect?

Single Player Gameplay

Fruit Ninja on the Kinect works just the way you think it might. You are able to use both arms to slice the fruit in mid-air. Everything from the mobile version is here. You’re able to connect your combos, slice around bombs, go into frenzies, and miss the frozen banana, to which you then proceed to restart the game.

I had some time to play around with some of the Kinect launch titles at E3 2010 and felt that some of the third party games were sometimes unresponsive, uncomfortable, and not as fluid as advertised. Fruit Ninja Kinect is a totally different story. We were immediately able to jump in and and get to playing right away, which brings me to the multiplayer portion of the game. With two players on-screen, the frame rate didn’t drop and was just as smooth as it is on single player.

Multiplayer Gameplay

Multiplayer works the same way it works on the iOS version of the game, without the lag. Multiplayer on Fruit Ninja Kinect is the way multiplayer is meant to be played. The fun is increased when you have your 2nd player standing right next to you. You and your partner will share the screen in all game modes multiplayer. As of right now, there are no plans for any sort of Xbox Live matchmaking feature. Fruit Ninja offers up Cooperative, Competitive, Classic, and Zen game modes. 

Fruit Ninja Kinect will more than likely be the first Kinect title that is released on the XBLA as part of the Summer of Arcade on Xbox Live. As of right now, there is no official price nor release date as Microsoft still has to work out those details. The title will likely go for 1600 Microsoft Points ($19) and will release sometime this summer.

Written by:

Jake108 & DarknessOrchid