None of DDI's games have been great, and Ninjabread man continues the tradition of broken, boring, and unplayable games.

User Rating: 1 | Ninjabread Man WII
(+) a pretty creative name; graphics aren't quite as lousy as Anubis II; it's over quickly

(-) it's just continuous jumping puzzles in rapid succession; same broken jumping and combat controls are Anubis II; same worthless menus and tutorial as Anubis II; same broken camera as Anubis II; some movement glitches; level design is brutal and unfair; many of the enemies are overpowered and cheap; the graphics are still pretty lousy; the annoying music is sure to cause migraines

You've got to admit, someone would require a pretty nifty head on their shoulders to come up with a name like Ninjabread Man. I mean, it's like a gingabread, but a ninja! The name collides together soundly! How marvelous is that? And the concept of bringing such a unique character in video game form would be very fascinating. You'd think nothing could go wrong, there's nothing like a heroic cookie fighting other maniacal foods all in the perspective of a giant jelly filled donut. It's clear that the wit behind the creation of this main character was probably aware of the potential a game of this sort could have.

That is, except the fact that it's being ported by the infamous cancer on the video game industry, Data Design Interactive. They're only out to make a quick buck, looking like they excavate games from the middle of the 1990's, and porting them over to the Wii with a modest price tag, and expect uninformed people to pay for them. Especially with the essence of Ninjabread Man, with a bright and colorful cover art, and an ingenious idea, it's easy to believe that the sole reason that this game exists is to attract the uninformed and rip off even more of their precious money.

First turning on this disaster, if you've had the misfortune of playing any of Data Design's other platformers, you'll be greeted with familiar simplistic menus, familiar uninspired interface, and a copied-and-pasted tutorial level, where you jump the same platforms, defeat the same basic non-moving enemies with your broken sword attack, and shoot down the same moving targets (even moving in the same directions!) as you remember in Anubis II. In fact, you'd be forgiven for automatically assuming that Rock N' Roll Adventures and Trixie in Toyland have identical tutorial levels, therefore proving that Data Design Interactive is just rushing numerous games with the same engine in an effort to make quick cash. In a brief moment of being fair, Ninjabread Man's tutorial does have some old feller staring at you through each stage, a difference which has to count for something, right?

You could probably laugh at the game's expense at that point, but you're passing the safety fence the minute you go to the first level. The game is essentially one jumping puzzle after another, and these jumping puzzles are created in the dozens within a few feet of each other, reused relentlessly. To gather the scrolls you need to activate the portal, you'll need to collect all eight of them, you know, just like Anubis II. But the jumping controls are just as schizophrenic as ever. You can just barely move a muscle on your hand with the nun-chuck to make the worthless cookie jump, or alternately press the Z button. But you only have a limit of 16 different turning directions, and this can make it awkward and difficult to perform your jump correctly. And worse yet, when jumping on the floating pieces of mass, Ninjabread Man will often get stuck in the wall of the platform in the middle of the jump, and you can't jump again, so you must fall. And judging that the entire game is flooded with jumping puzzles, this problem really strains.

And if the jumps weren't hard enough for you, you'll have to deal with numerous enemies in pretty small areas, all conspiring for your doom. They're all generic and forgettable ties with the theme of food and candy, like walking cakes and jelly rolls, and for some reason, buzzing bees. Some of them are stupid, just standing there waiting for you to kill them. While others shoot practically invisible projectiles at you, and other's are completely immune to your attacks, and will explode once you reach a certain radius, therefore inflicting guaranteed and unavoidable damage. These jerks will often stand at the end of a floating platform, and you won't be able to reach it without jumping that way, so you'll need to first attempt to jump and take damage, most likely resulting in you falling to more liquid jelly like lava, to take more damage, and walk your slow way to the same platform without the enemy there this time.

But you can kill that enemy with a melee attack using the cookie's sword, but of course, it only works like 1/10th of the time, and you'll still have to deal with the unforgivably bad collision detection, so good luck with that. You'd probably be better off using your ninja-tools, by pointing the remote and pressing A. While this can guarantee you unlimited defense against the moronic enemies, it won't help you with the truly satanic level design, which is the deadly combination of tedious and frustrating. You'll often have to walk quite massive distances with nothing to fight or nothing to see, which gets boring really fast. And other times, the challenge is just unrealistic and punishing. There's one level where there's a scroll in a well, but if you get it, you'll fall through a hole all the way down to the candy lava, therefore taking more damage and having to do more monotonous walking just to recover your distance. And there's another level that depicts that there's clearly a bridge to a scroll and a check-point, but you'll fall through all of them except a select few, to more damn candy lava and more blocks that mark the formation of the solid blocks from above. Therefore you're forced to study them and rely on memory and guesswork to get to the scroll. Stupid.

And on top of what I've already established is wrong with this ridiculous excuse for a game, the camera isn't helping matters. In fact, even considering how truly overpowered and cheap the enemies are, the camera is by a long shot the worst of them all. It will still move where it wants to rather than where you want to, will sometimes rotate when you taking one of the thousands of jumping puzzles, and sometimes will even glitch out so badly that you'll actually need to hold a button to keep it straight.

With a brief moment of being optimistic, the graphics in Ninjabread Man are a step up from its partner in crime Anubis II, but that hardly justifies bragging rights. As opposed to the numerous shades of yellow and orange, you've got a lot more bright colors in Ninjabread Man's candy world. But it's still just a different skin of the same basic design, which still screams PS1 by all accounts. But apparently Ninjabread Man couldn't handle having better graphics and better sound, because the sound is much worse than the former Anubis II. You'll have to hear the same repugnant looping song in the tutorial, and this time at an entire level. The rest of the music is slightly better, but it's still painful to listen to and will be more likely to give you a headache than the already busted frame rate. And you'll push yourself to bear through the constant buzzing of the bees and other white noise, which will make up the bulk of the sound.

Children love candy. It's pretty cute actually, when they'll ask you really nicely if they can get a Hershey's Milk Chocolate and a Snickers, but you tell them they can only have one, and they'll throw a fit right there in the middle of the convenience store. The candy was attracting them, just like Ninjarbead Man is likely to attract children. And it's premise, in theory, sounds really good for kids. But the game is unbelievably difficult, boring, and frustrating, and to add a final blow, there's no point in playing. There's only three levels, half of what you have the pleasure to play through in Anubis II, and you'll likely blow through it in about an hour. Then you get sent back to the title screen. There's no cut-scene, some word of congratulations, or even ending credits. Well I don't see why the people who made this game would really want to reveal themselves anyway. At least Ninjabread Man is short, which is usually a bad thing for today's games, but the terrible platforming will be so taxing and hateful to players that it's likely a show of mercy. Data Design Interactive is just an awful video game company, just constantly porting worthless shovel-wear products in an effort to destroy the Wii with the worst of intentions, and Ninjabread Man can be thought of as DDI's mascot. But nobody should really be proud of being the king of crap.