LO2 Comparing Reviews

Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 - Review Comparison

Reviews used:

Official Xbox Magazine review by Chris Schilling

YouTube video review by Rare Bishop - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGMrYJVBYO4

Genre

Both the magazine review and the video review agree that the game has an arcade / party genre, as it has a classic arcade style, but it is also best played in a group. Official Xbox Magazine says “this is a game designed for the same kind of party environments in which Wii proved such a hit” while the video review describes it as “even more fun if you have friends or family members to play it with.” The reviews don’t differ too much at this stage as they both agree on the genre.

Target Audience

I think that both reviews also agree on target audience, which would be people of all ages. Xbox Magazine says that “anyone can flail around and have fun”, implying that the game is enjoyable for all ages, and the fact that the video review says “even more fun if you have friends or family to play it with” implies that any group of friends or a family, which probably includes people of different ages, can have fun on Fruit Ninja Kinect 2. Again, there isn’t much difference in the reviews at this stage.

Narrative

At the point of explaining the narrative, the reviews begin to differ. I thought that Rare Bishop’s video review went into a fair bit more detail than the Xbox Magazine. For example, the video review states states that there are a number of challenges to complete, and “what these challenges do is rank you up, so you get belts, so you’ll go from yellow to brown belts, stuff like that.” The video review also states that “there are four different festivals for you to go through, one of them is dodging ninja stars, one of them you need to hit a certain amount of targets, another one is the spotlight…”. These comments let give us a good idea of what the game is like and what you can do in it. The video review also helps in the way that you can see the game in action as you listen to the review. 

In comparison, the magazine goes into less detail. It gives you a good idea of the modes that are available and what you can do in them, but doesn’t expand on that. Whilst the video review explains what you can unlock and actually names the new modes as “festivals”, the magazine lacks this information so we don’t get an idea of what happens as we progress in the game.

Characters

Characters seemed to be a bit of a grey area for both reviews. Although they both lacked information, the video review was again a little bit better. There was not a single mention of characters in the Xbox Magazine review, leaving readers with only the obvious idea that you play as the fruit ninja. The video review did improve on this, saying “it [the game] can introduce new characters, and you can unlock these by levelling up.” This is not much of an improvement however, and so both reviews fail to mention the sort of characters you can unlock, how many there are, what they are called or what they do. The only thing we know for certain after both reviews is that the main character is the fruit ninja, who you play as.

Gameplay

There is not much to the gameplay in this game, as it is an arcade game and all based on the simple principle that you must use your arms to slice fruit, and get high scores. Therefore, the magazines say similar things on this front - Official Xbox Magazine states that “it replaces the neat finger-swiping controls of the original with full-body input, but you only really need your arms.” Rare Bishop’s video review echoes this with “it gets you up and active and gets you moving a little bit, even if it’s just your upper body.” While there are different modes and ranks you can unlock and achieve, it is all based on the principle of slicing fruit using your arms.

Platform

Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 is only available on Xbox One coupled with Kinect 2.0. No differences between the reviews here.

Personal recommendation of the reviewer

This is another section in which the two reviews are different in some ways. Both of the reviews do agree that the game is best played in a group, with Xbox Magazine saying it is a game “built as a piece of bright, breezy family entertainment” and the video review saying “it’s a ton of fun to play… even more if you have friends or family members”. 

However, the two opinions start to differ here. The video review says “I feel like fifteen bucks is a little bit too steep, especially for a game you can get for free on your phone or tablet.” The Xbox Magazine review contains no mention of value for money, which could be due to bias towards Xbox. Since the reviewer, Chris Schilling, is being paid to write the review, he might try to sell you the game more than a possibly more honest YouTube reviewer, who isn’t being paid. 

A similar case is when the YouTube review says “if you’re playing alone, I can feel it getting old really fast.” This is quite a critical comment which there is no sign of in the Xbox Magazine, perhaps again due to the reason mentioned earlier. The Xbox Magazine made no real critical comments throughout.

Overall, I think the video review was more detailed in places and was a little more critical than the Xbox Magazine. Chris Schilling gave the game 7/10, and while Rare Bishop didn’t give a specific score, I feel like it would have been more around the 6/10 mark.