Lately developers have been undergoing the process of bringing games heavily inspired by mobile top sellers to the Wii U eShop, but Cypronia has been creating Cake Ninja games for years now. The major problem with the logic of bringing mobile games to a grounded console is exactly that, the games lose their mobility, putting games like Cake Ninja 3: The Legend Continues in a tough position.

Starting off, this entry in the Cake Ninja series is the nicest and most polished game. There are almost no framerate drops to be found, which is a welcome improvement over previous titles and helps to make the gameplay fluid and playable.


In Cake Ninja 3, you swipe the stylus, your finger or even point with a Wii remote to cut pieces of cake which are thrown up onto the screen from below. Your goal is usually to slice the cakes as many times as possible before they all fall below the screen and go for a high score. Thrown into the mix are pieces of fruit, which you aren't supposed to hit. Why anybody would slice up perfectly good cakes is a mystery to us, but it does make for some decently enjoyable gameplay for a while.

The graphical presentation is about what you'd expect from this type of game; the cakes and fruits are a little rough around the edges and the graphics are basic, but they get the job done and portray what they are trying to well enough to know the difference between fruit and cakes, which is always a good sign. As mentioned before the framerate is held at a solid rate, making gameplay fluid, steady and better than a lot of other recent releases which are nearly unplayable from this one fact.

Across the different modes you'll have to avoid cutting fruit, then cut fruit and avoid cakes in a second mode, cutting different cakes on a time limit and even cutting 60 watermelons as small as possible. Another mode has you awkwardly trying to cut cakes as they fly over a hole in the ground, which you try to somehow angle the cut food to fall into, but it doesn't work very well and you'll end up just slicing randomly hoping they fall in so you can move on.


The gameplay tries to spice things up beyond simply having cakes and fruit to slice by giving you some powerups. These powerups help you to advance in the online leaderboards, which are a new addition to the series as well, though the leaderboard is almost designed to award playing longer more than playing smarter. If you simply have more patience and a longer attention span than most, you can top the leaderboard by simply playing the game for a while, though some skill is undoubtedly required.

While leaderboards are a step up, some of the presentation is still very strange and bizarre, from the annoying voice that announces some text on screen to the mind numbing music that loops as you play. Some of the load times are a bit long as well, especially when you need to wait a significant time before uploading your scores to the leaderboards and the initial game loading time.

While Cake Ninja 3: The Legend Continues is a step up from the previous entries, the game is still far from being an ideal purchase. Gameplay is fun, if only for a bit, but the game goes against the idea of pick-up and play by being grounded to a living room only experience. If you enjoyed Cake Ninja in the past, this version has enough improvements to justify a purchase, but if slicing repeatedly isn't your cup of tea, there's not much this entry does to change your mind.


Review copy provided by: Cypronia