Pirates, ninjas and dodgeball: What could go wrong?
Not only does "Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball" not actually answer the pressing question of which team is cooler, the game doesn't actually resemble dodgeball much at all. Instead the highly basic game is really much more like a melee brawl that happens to involve chucking balls around. It may be fun for about one night with a bunch of friends, but really not much longer.
The game starts off allowing you to play pirates or ninjas with the chance to unlock zombies and robots. There's no tutorial, just on-screen instructions about how to play. Luckily it's not hard to learn on the fly through the single-player game, with matches taking about three to five minutes making it easy to just try again and again. Sadly, even if you're succeeding every time, the game play isn't much less repetitive. There are only four different boards, all packaged with highly repetitive music and a limited number of characters and special moves to choose from.
You start off by playing 2 v. 2 matches, pitting your pirates or ninjas against zombies, robots and finally the opposing title faction. There's a tiny bit of plot you learn between matches that has some fairly entertaining dialogue mostly devoted to a pirate girl who wants to meet boys, ninjas finding it weird that their leader has become a robot and how much both groups hate the others.
Beat the 2 v. 2 version and you'll unlock the 3 v. 3 and then 4 v. 4, which still brings you through the progression from graveyard to robot factory to either a beach or snowy Japanese forest for a final showdown. The main difference between the easy and harder settings is that the opposing AI seems to get much smarter while your guys bumble around waiting for you to save them. You can bounce between controlling different characters depending on who has a good position, but the graphics are so basic that even the little marker sometimes doesn't help you keep from getting lost in the crowd, something which is even more problematic in the multiplayer game. And the fact that one of the ninjas is also a robot might be entertaining for the plot, but it's pretty obnoxious when you're actually fighting robots. The most interesting screen, the factory, is also difficult to play on with ramps and walls working poorly with the camera angle making it fortunate the game tosses in an icon pointing the direction of the nearest ball.
The entertainment factor comes from doing everything that was definitely not allowed on the elementary school playground. Pegging people in the head, going offsides to grab other people's balls and hitting someone carrying a ball to make them drop it are all encouraged. Instead of getting out with one hit, each character has a health bar. Catching the ball regenerates it, and a full bar allows you to use special attacks like charming enemies or disappearing from sight.
Still the mechanics tend to get as old as hearing a buddy shout "ninja vanish" every time he uses it. The quick play and high numbers of players can make for a fun party game, but there's little incentive for replay with not much to master. It also lacks the match-to-match variability based on terrain and characters you might find in other sports or melee games.
Still the game costs just 800 points ($10) from the Xbox Live arcade, so for a night of entertainment it's not a bad price to pay. Just don't expect many of your friends to want to play again next week.