One minute into Mexican Ninja, I had farted on multiple enemies. One hour into Mexican Ninja, I had beaten a leather-clad pole dancer who wielded a jizz-spurting cock as her weapon of choice. Ten hours into Mexican Ninja, I was offered a legendary ability that appeared to poke fun at the World Trade Center attacks, calling itself ‘9/12’ and upping the likelihood of a powerful airborne move hitting its mark.
If that’s too much, it would be totally fair to stop reading now and forget all about this game. It doesn’t get any better. The striking visuals and impressive trailers sell a product that doesn’t exist; one that lists “no sexual content or nudity” on its Steam page before a giant pair of tits spray milk all over a boss arena that is bursting with gimps who you can twat with a dildo.
The game desperately wants you to think it’s funny. It’s not, and it’s also fundamentally broken to play, with lobotomised enemies and a difficulty curve that is pretty much a flat-line, representing its dead-on-arrival nature that flashes everything it’s got within a couple of runs.
Writer/director Carlos Rincones has an affection for B-movies, so I was going into this one wanting plenty of stylised weirdness, and humour, to back up the strong visuals.
Rincones, who previously worked with Planet Terror director Robert Rodriquez, has been thinking about this concept for a long time, switching the idea from a sitcom based on the multi-cultural assassin to an animated series, before settling on this 2.5D roguelike with Madbricks, his Colombia-based development studio.
The premise is simple: the ‘Narkuza’ crime syndicate are running wild across Nuevo Tokyo, a vibrant neon blend of Mexico and Japan that serves as a colourful backdrop to your lone wolf dishing out some seriously one-sided pain.
Starting with a basic light attack, heavy attack, parry, dash and jump, it’s your job to rid the city of its dangers across five stages and six bosses, improving your arsenal via the favours of gods that offer passive abilities, charms, and Mexican Jutsus. The Jutsus that are most important to curtailing your enemies – these are active parts of your loadout that are excellent for crowd control.
A little too good, in fact, as Mexican Ninja is game-breakingly easy. From the first swipe of your sword, it’s very clear the devs want you to constantly score outrageous combos against a repeated cast of enemies who are nothing but fodder against the speed of your attacks.
These types of games have always been about lining foes up and trying to wipe them out in one go, but Mexican Ninja doesn’t even really need you to do that. Most thugs are so slow to track your position that a gust of wind could knock them over.
This is especially true for the bosses, which pose the easiest end-of-level showdowns I can remember. The first is just a more obese version of the game’s generic fat enemies, the second is a ‘Crack Panda’ that barely moves, and the third is a broken mess of a robotic hovercraft driven by ‘Tech Bros’. At one point they hurl a racist slur at your character (but the machine wears a sombrero, so it’s probably fine).
That fight represents the worst of Mexican Ninja. The machine fires rockets that barely cover half the screen, so you can literally stand still for multiple seconds and not get hit. After whooping it a few times, the boss started to disappear at intervals that weren’t animated like its other teleportations. This brokenness repeated in a later battle against a disco-loving grand priest who thrusts while you whack the hell out of him.
Part of the issue is the strength of the permanent upgrades that you unlock between runs. Huge increases to health, Jutsu power and general damage quickly render the later goons just as simple as those on the outskirts of the city. Unlocking the double dash effectively ends any remaining semblance of a contest, as being able to close so much distance so quickly means you can pong back and forth, interrupting most animations before anyone hits you.
The Mexican Jutsus are also heavily stacked in your favour, although the variety is poor. Do you want knives to fall from the sky, or pinatas? Crowd control becomes second nature with any that swamp across the screen.
There’s never any real need to consider your build, as effects such as hangover (slows enemies) and curse (ups your power but makes you take more damage) aren’t impactful when everyone is so simple to cut down. Just stock passive buffs early on, add a legendary Jutsu near the end, and you’re good.
It’s frustrating, because the devs seem to understand the push-and-pull of what makes a decent sidescrolling beat ‘em up. The combos are satisfying. There’s a good crunch to your moves and the main character is nicely animated. He has a number of fun skins to try, which provide different perks, including a great Guillermo del Toro/My Neighbor Totoro mash-up that hints at what the cultural combination could have amounted to with a little more thought behind it.
Level designs are full of energy, but annoyingly, are the most likely culprits of you actually taking damage. This is most prominent in the second city section, where a combination of bear traps, explosive barrels falling from the sky, and low walls funnel you into likely getting hurt. Later on, lasers cut off arenas, but enemies run through them, and statues slam down on those who have barely entered your periphery. Movement is impeded by outlandish furniture, making such environments the most formidable foes in the entire game.
A handful of side objectives are littered across levels; things like collecting condoms, or dealing with a weed-smoker, because sex and drugs are cool. It’s not surprising that most of these additional objectives come down to just killing things until the achievement pops up to remind you it was in play. No real consideration has gone into them aside from being able to shoehorn more of the lame dialogue in.
That’s the most disappointing thing about Mexican Ninja. The concept could absolutely work. An extra few months of fine-tuning could have turned a fleeting experience into something more substantial. Roguelikes survive on replayability, whether that comes through engaging gameplay, narrative or progression systems that hook you in for one more go. Mexican Ninja has none of those. It even bugged out after my first successful run, losing the cash picked up along the way.
As the credits rolled, I wondered what ideas were left on the table. How close were the devs to adding a Godzilla that shits tacos? Or a luchadore that spews sake mist before taking an age to rustle up a hurricanrana? It’s a problem that both of those ideas sound entirely viable.
Humour is subjective, but bad gameplay is not. Somewhere along the road, Mexican Ninja got a little too over-the-top without having the comedy chops to pull it off (what is actually Mexican or Japanese about 9/11?). That brashness could have made a world of difference to the playing experience, which lacks the finesse or challenge to make it worthwhile.
Ironically, I’m not even sure the main character is a ninja. Madbricks’ desired name was likely vetoed due to the presence of Afro Samurai, which is probably the funniest thing about the entire game.
