Intro

Veggie Samurai, a brand new innovative game from Quantum Squid, which involves slicing and dicing vegetables which are flung up in front of you on screen. Think you’ve heard that before? Chances are you probably have. There is no doubt that Veggie Samurai has taken huge inspirations from the top ten hit Fruit Ninja. Make no mistake, this isn’t the first clone on the App Store, and there have been games who have gained success from being a clone but the trick to creating a prosperous imitation is to add something new and exciting, something that people will love and enjoy more than the original. The big question is then, does Veggie Samurai provide this, or is it just another regressive game ready to be piled up with the rest of the flock?

Gameplay 4/10

The aim of the game is to chop as many vegetables as you can. There are also annoying bottles of poison which show up and if you hit them, you lose instantly.

The one main feature that sets this apart from Fruit Ninja is the dicing. This enables you to cut each vegetable into quarters. When I saw this being demonstrated on the iPad with a clean cut across a whole row of vegetables and then a four finger swipe downwards I was instantly attracted to it because of the new possibilities it contained. However, after a few play-throughs I started to wonder what all the hype was about. In my opinion, dicing only made the screen more cluttered and pulls you away from the main object of the game.

There are two modes in the game, Samurai and Harmony. Samurai involves chopping as many vegetables as you can whilst avoiding carafes of poison. You start off with three lives and you lose one every time you miss a vegetable (sound familiar?).

The many combos play to your advantage as they quickly boost your score.

Harmony Mode requires you to slice and dice as many vegetables as possible in a certain time limit, trying to get as higher score as possible. I did find this find this very successful as there are a wide range of combos to execute to gain a higher score. This bares glaring resemblance to Fruit Ninja’s Zen Mode.

As for the gameplay itself, the game seemed to run at quite a slow rate, probably because you are given more time to dice a vegetable, and overall felt surprisingly hard to play but in theory should be very easy. The fact is I am spending too much time trying to dice vegetables than actually avoiding the poison bottles which constantly ends in me losing when I really shouldn’t have. This led to unsatisfactory gameplay that I didn’t want to come back to.

Graphics 7/10

The graphics are by no mean rubbish, but lacked a certain flare and vibrancy shown in its competitors. I like how the vegetables seem to twirl as a 3D object when they are flung up from below, but this is nothing new. Nonetheless, the game ran smoothly on my 3G and I didn’t come across any crashes or framerate issues.

Controls 9/10

The controls are identical to Fruit Ninja and involve in you swiping your fingers across the screen to cut the vegetables. There is also an incentive of combos to encourage you to do wicked four finger gestures, which works well on the iPad, but is not as effective on the smaller iPhone screen. I also found the slicing to be a bit unresponsive and the game sometimes didn’t recognise my swipes.

Dicing is the main stand-out feature for Veggie Samurai.

Sound 9/10

The sound effects are good and sharp. The slicing of the vegetables are crisp and match what I would imagine the slicing of vegetables to sound like. Unlike Fruit Ninja, Veggie Samurai includes a sound track that plays throughout the whole game. At first the music sounds great and perfectly matches the game. However after a longer time of listening I began to get quite annoyed at it’s frustratingly high-pitched tone and over repetitive theme. After a short while I ended up muting it.

Menus 9/10

The menus are well presented, but I found the options to be a bit unresponsive at times. I like the idea of samurai swords being the options. They are also easy to navigate. Even though they may lack some flare, they are certainly well done and don’t hinder the game in any way.

Longevity 7/10

On its own, Veggie Samurai has a good longevity for the price. With the two modes there is a certain amount of play time to be had here, especially if you like competing in online leaderboards and such. Nonetheless, the terrible, unattractive gameplay may put you off and make this quite the opposite. Additionally, I feel it is still lacking some unique elements that hopefully will be rectified in coming updates. Veggie Samurai has a healthy set of Achievements and a good leaderboard with OpenFeint integration.

The menus aren't the greatest but get me by.

Cost 10/10

$0.99/£0.59 is the right price for Veggie Samurai because of its short high score elements.

Conclusion 54/70 – 3/5

On its own, I could see Veggie Samurai being a great, well developed game, but an original idea is half the work when developing a new title in such a saturated market. Therefore I’d suggest buying with great caution and I would definitely recommend you check out Fruit Ninja first.

Veggie Samurai on the App Store.