Fruit Ninja HD iPad Review

To our surprise, Fruit Ninja has become an iPhone phenomenon like Doodle Jump or Pocket God. Who would have thought a game entirely about slicing up fruit could capture the attention of over a million gamers, who normally shun healthy eating habits? Although it now has some competition from Veggie Samurai, we still think this is a fun and simple game for the iPad.

The HD version of Fruit Ninja offers very nice, smooth graphics, and the iPad’s bigger screen lets you slice with increased precision. It also contains the Dojo unlockables from the latest iPhone updates, including new samurai swords and backgrounds. These give the game a slight element of customization, so that not every fruit-chopping round has to look exactly the same.

Fruit Ninja HD also introduces a two-player mode, where you can play either of the game’s two main modes with a friend in split-screen. Although we don’t think Fruit Ninja is a game tailor-made for local multiplayer (we have more fun beating our friends’ high scores in OpenFeint), it’s a nice addition.

If Fruit Ninja really wants to keep up with the competition, we recommend taking a page from Veggie Samurai’s playbook (which was Xeroxed from Fruit Ninja in the first place) and introducing multiple slices, or “dices”. While the lack of dicing makes Fruit Ninja more focused on accuracy over Cuisinart-style shredding, an extra “fruit salad” mode could be a good deal of fun and lead to some higher scores.

If you’re trying to decide between this game and Veggie Samurai, you wouldn’t go wrong with owning both. But if you can only buy one, make it Fruit Ninja HD. Fruits leave a nice juicy splatter that doesn’t feel right with broccoli, and the added Dojo customization gives Fruit Ninja a bit more charm. Fruit Ninja HD is a lot of fun, and you could find yourself playing it more than the recommended five times a day.

Editor's Note: This review covers the content exclusive to the iPad version of this game. For the full game review, click here.