I've finished Mini Ninjas. You might be thinking that's a bit quick, especially for my standards. Rest assured it's not because the game is microscopically short or because I gave up on it in disgust: it's so darned addictive I played for some 8 hours straight yesterday! :feels like some sort of sad frog with no life: Another 3 hours this morning saw it finished. I'm missing 2 achievements and I intend to head back and collect them in a bit.

Each time I thought about quitting there was something else to play on for. Another beautiful view, another neat stealth bit, another item to pick up, another ninja to free and try out, another castle to infiltrate, another funny cutscene with the Evil Samurai Warlord, another area of water where I could go fishing. The demo does not do this game full justice. It's one of the early levels where you don't have so many options.

The game plays like a mix of Tenchu, Metal Gear Solid, Zelda and Ninja Gaiden. Most of the time the choice is often left you to: you can stealth your way along killing few enemies, stealth along and ambush, charge in head first and engage in slaughter, or - most often - a mix of all three. You might be a mini ninja but that does not hold you back from having the toolkit and abilities of a larger one. You can do the acrobatics you'd expect of a ninja: wall run, climb, wall jump etc. Aditionally you have items like smoke bombs, potions, shuriken, caltrops, various types of bombs, lots of magic spells, and 5 different melee weapons.

Lots of attention and love have gone into the Japanese setting, to the point of having Japanese voice actors provide the English dialogue with the correct accent (a la Shogun: TW (actually for that reason I kept expecting to hear how "The enemy general is running away like a whipped dog!")) and Japanese dialogue for the samurai enemies. Music is all Japanese too, and it's lovely. And the views! This game has some of the most gorgeous scenery I've witnessed in a game. The flooded village level in particular had some sights I'd love to snapshot and use as a background.

Played on hard mode the difficulty was perfect for a relaxing ramble. It was possible to die very quickly if a mistake was made, yet most of the time it was easy to avoid making fatal mistakes with a bit of thought and care. Those times when I did die another attempt or two with different tactics saw me successful.

Definitely one of those 'pure joy' type games. I'd gladly have paid twice as much for it if I'd known what lay ahead.