 Hey everyone, before I get into this video, I want to remind you to enter our trials of mana giveaway. You can enter it by commenting down below, liking this video, subscribing to the channel and hitting that bell icon. I'll give away a copy of the game on the very last day of this month and you can enter on every single video that I've released this month or live streams after the fact on video on demand, all that stuff. I wish you luck and let's get talking about Ninjala. Yes, I'm finally, finally talking about Ninjala. For those who don't know, I went hands on with the game, well, the upcoming Switch exclusive game by GungHo at E3 2018. It was a game I played on a whim on the final day of the show after I had literally played every other Switch game available on the show floor. It had a pretty large booth, but the game looked rather uninteresting to me. It gave off a vibe upon initial look of just being another cutesy indie brawler that basically was like a billion other games I had played before. I never really understood why it had such a large booth and frankly, the lines were always pretty short and I figured I was on point with what this game is. It didn't seem to grab the interest of many, despite being front and center before you could even see the Nintendo booth. Eric from the Nintendo Prime Podcast and myself hopped in for one match of this game that was an 8 player free for all. A match that took something like 5-8 minutes, hard to recall exactly because it's been a couple years ago. 90 minutes later, I had played about a dozen matches, collected every single pin they had available and even won a couple matches which allowed me to get my picture taken as well as a Ninjala blow up bat to take home. Oh, and a t-shirt, all prototypical E3 swag. But it wasn't the swag that I cared about, rather it was the game itself. It went from a somewhat clunky initial play session where I couldn't wrap myself around all the mechanics and the very different type of controls that this game had compared to most I have played to declaring this game as the next Splatoon shortly after playing it. That's a pretty lofty comparison and goal for what is a brand new IP not being made or even heavily promoted by Nintendo themselves despite being exclusive to Nintendo Switch. My video comparing the potential game's success to Splatoon took off to the tune of 15,000 views. My subsequent release of an off-screen gameplay video showing around 7 minutes of gameplay took off to the tune of 18,000 views. These may seem like miniscule numbers compared to some of my more popular videos, but for a channel that seems to only get big numbers when I talk about my favorite franchise in Zelda, these numbers were actually rather interesting. It was a pretty big unknown game that few seemed to even care about, yet in the midst of E3 coverage of much bigger titles, it was the Ninjala videos performing the best. It was due to release in spring of 2019, but 10 months ago it was delayed and it wasn't even delayed with a public announcement, it just was delayed. That's the last time I even talked about this game publicly, beyond a few mentions here and there in random videos and streams, got the Ninjala bad up, put the Ninjala shades on or when I wear the Ninjala t-shirt every now and then. The game went virtually radio silent until the last Nintendo Direct Mini last month where it made an appearance and announced the release date of May 27th. The new trailer showed off a bunch of new weapons, modes, features that we hadn't seen in the E3 2018 demo. It even admittedly piqued the interest of people in my audience who joined me for a live reaction, people who had previously not been sold on the game. It was also announced as a free to play game, something that I felt was an excellent move for an unproven multiplayer mayhem game. Since then, the Ninjala news hasn't stopped flooding in. We got a prologue video, which sets up the entire premise of the story of the game, which yes, there is a story. In fact, I got a glimpse of the story back at E3 2018 with a strange live action ninja fight sequence, but the prologue video, which is well put together and worth a watch for eager players, is very nice and wouldn't be surprising if it was ripped right out of the intro to the story mode of the game. In the prologue, we now have seen numerous gameplay videos and there is even a public open beta happening on April 28th. This is possibly my game of the year for 2020, yet you haven't seen me make a video about Ninjala in almost a year, all this news, and I've just been silent. That changes today. See, while writing the script for this video, I was actually contacted by the folks behind Ninjala. They had seen my videos now mostly over 2 years old at this point and wanted to connect with me and talk about the game and get my personal feedback on the beta on the 28th. Quite an honor to be honest that a developer even cares that much about my opinion that they would contact me personally. I've never actually had anyone behind a game actually give a crap what I had to think about an upcoming release of a game. Of course for them, it's likely just because even now my videos remain some of the most viewed videos of the game on YouTube, even as my videos have imbarried way down the YouTube search list. They also view me as a nice way to advertise the game, essentially. But they had no idea I was even working on this video. That's pretty crazy, all things considered. But see, I like to think the real reason they care what I have to think is because I care so passionately about this game. I haven't been this excited for a game as a release since Breath of the Mother Freakin' Wild. Yes folks, my favorite game of all time. And I'm starting to compare this game to that already. That feeling I had at E3 2016 when I first stepped out and saw the world of Breath of the Wild. That's what I felt the first time playing Ninjala. Ninjala is an 8-person multiplayer game based around a tournament being held by the World Ninja Association. You'll kind of get the gist of this as you get more into the story when you play the game itself. The goal is to score the most points in a given match and that is done through achieving various tasks within the match, which include dispensing of the other players, of course, along with collecting things and all that jazz. Of course, that's just the main crux of what the game will offer. Similar to Splatoon, the game's true calling is all of the monstrous online multiplayer mayhem to behold. But there is also a story mode, as I previously mentioned. You use various unique abilities from the eight playable characters, various melee weapon types and gum, yeah, chewing gum for some crazy action. I mean, you've seen it all throughout this video with the various gameplay clips. The game is rather nuts, fast-paced, but extremely skill-based. The controls are hard to explain, but the game itself just has a different feel than any other game I've ever played. The reason I still call this game the next Splatoon is because Splatoon offered something no other game was really doing well at that time. It took shooters and turned them into something totally unique, and that's exactly what this game is. Another unique twist on the multiplayer experience, one that is absolutely insane. I'm hardly a master. Even at E3, I was merely the second best player according to the staff, as there was one other person who was actually way more obsessed with the game than I was. But trying to encapsulate the feeling of playing the game is pretty difficult. Hence my Splatoon comparison. How many of you have played Splatoon or Splatoon 2? There's millions of you guys out there, and if you remember just how right that game felt from your very first match to the very last, that's exactly what this game feels like. Something you have never played before, but once you have, it just feels right. It's addicting, it's never ending, and you will be left wondering why no other game has come up with the same mechanics and gone mainstream before. The nice thing too is with the free open beta and the game being free to play, there's absolutely no reason that all of you watching shouldn't give the game a try. It won't be for everyone. No game is. But the only thing I really worry about with this game was the barrier to entry. As I said before, as an onlooker at E3 2018 for a couple days, the game didn't seem to really interest me until I played it, and I only played it because I had played everything else they had to offer for Switch. This game should be a $60 experience. The problem is such a weird concept of a game and a cutesy art style that isn't being promoted by Nintendo themselves would basically doom the game to fail. Like so many other games before it that are probably worth $60 but just don't have the clout behind it. But with that barrier removed, for better or for worse, again we don't know exactly how the game is going to be monetized, the floodgates should open up to millions of players in the first week. I can't wait to play with a bunch of you on the 28th and the open beta. And you know I'm going to be live streaming that open beta and making a follow up reaction video. And naturally, I'll be there day one when the game releases to play with the whole world. But mark my words, this game is going to be the next platoon, maybe even bigger. You're just not going to want to skip out on this one. And yeah, I mean that's what I got for you guys. Ninjal is just, it's hard for me to explain my excitement for this game. I really hope all of you guys tune in to my live stream on the 28th because it's going to be insane, it's going to be crazy. You're going to see a lot of pure joy, a lot of pure frustration when I lose matches. I mean that's to be real. I was the second best player in D3, so it makes me the best player in the world, right? No, I mean that's not really how it works. But it's going to be a lot of fun. And heck, you might be wondering, oh, where's your Ninjala T-shirt and the mask thing? You guys have seen me have some of this before, the Ninjala Bat, which has a hole in it now. Yeah, I honestly don't know where that stuff is, right? This is exactly where I was trying to find it for the video. But whatever, I, you know, people are probably already thinking about pretty big shill for this game now that I have developers talking to me about it. But I really don't care what I care about is how amazingly awesome this game is going to be and how much fun you guys are going to have playing it with me. I'm serious guys. This game is going to be the next Splatoon. And you're going to not have to wait long to find out. I mean just a few days away from the Open Beta, a month out from the game itself launching. It's free to play. I really hope you all join me because it's going to be one hell of a ride. And just like I played a ton of Splatoon back in the day on live stream with a bunch of viewers and Patreon people, you know I'll be doing the exact same thing with this game. So stay tuned folks.