Hello my fellow Ninjas and non-Ninjas! I am Ninjtendo and it has been far to long since I have made a front page appearance. I've been around in the shadows though killing off Destructoid's enemies and keeping a watchful eye on the staff. With that said, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you all that Hamza is MIA.

I was following him earlier today as he went to San Francisco. He was invited out by Gamecock to try out the new Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball game coming out for XBLA early next year when he disappeared on me. I'm not exactly sure how it happened but I know for a fact that Hamza would have wanted me, Ninjtendo, to take over his quest to play PvND. 

And play it I did. I played as the Ninjas and destroyed my life long enemy, the Pirates over and over again. Read about my experience with Pirates vs Ninja after the jump.  

I should first mention that you won't be just playing as Ninjas and Pirates in this crazy dodgeball tournament. Zombies and Robots are also going to be a part of the rooster of as well new classes that will join down the line (DLC).

Each class will perform differently. I only got to play as the Pirates (VERY BREIFLY) and the Ninjas. The Pirates can throw harder than the Ninjas, but are much slower than the Ninjas and have less stamina. The Ninjas are the exact opposite in that their throwing power is weaker, but they're much faster and have more stamina.

Every class will also have special attacks they can use during the battle. For instance, the Pirate Captain can make the ground explode around him, the female Pirate can blow a kiss that will force the opponents to switch sides temporally and another Pirate can summon a parrot to attack opponents. For the Ninjas, one of the Ninjas can throw out some Shurikens and another Ninja can become invisible for a short period. For the Zombies, one of them can bury under ground and shoot out of the ground and another Zombie can summon its cute and un-dead pet dog.As interesting as these special attacks are, they don't hurt anyone at all. They're used to only stun and distract your opponents. The only way to hurt anyone in the game is by using the dodgeball. All of the characters have melee attacks (swords, bones, etc) that are used to stun or deflect the dodgeball. You can also dodge attacks God of War style by using the right analog stick to do flips.

There are three types of attacks that a player can do with the dodgeball. There's the regular throw where you're just simply throwing the ball. Then there's the homing shot where the ball will lock onto a target and hit him no matter what. With both of these attacks though, the ball can either be deflected by the melee attack or caught by the opponent. You can actually go into a counter battle that can last until someone screws up or catches the ball. It's always a good idea to catch the ball though as you will regain health everytime the ball is caught.

The final throw style is the power shot that no one can escape. You can't catch or deflect the power shot but can still dodge it as it's not a homing shot. Basically, imagine the ball as a combination between when a character is "On fire" (NBA Jam style) and a Hadouken. Yeah, it's that powerful.  

The gameplay is very straightforward. There's one ball on the field that you have to get or force out of your opponents hands and hit the other team with it until the other teams life meter is drained. You can play by yourself with up to three computer controlled partners that you can switch between Madden style. Or you can play with three of your friends either on Live or on one Xbox (Halo style).  

There are only four maps to play on when the game comes out next month with more coming as DLC later on. I played on all of the maps and they all pretty much felt the same. Aside from the different backgrounds and locations, there was nothing different at all about them. It's fun running around smacking people in the face with a dodgeball, but it feels like it will get really stale after awhile because of the bland levels. Something that would help immensely would be taking a page out of Bomberman or even Gamecocks other party game, Hail to the Chimp, where the levels have all sorts of things going on to hurt or distract players to spice up the battles. 

Pirates vs Ninja should be out late next month for 800 points on XBLA. The game is going to be up to eight players and there will also be a story mode to help explain why all these groups are fighting each other. Speaking of which, I went ahead and asked why a Samurai was helping the Ninjas because of all the comments from CTZ's previous PvN post. The Cyber Ninja helped the Samurai out somehow so the Samurai is is indebted to the Cyber Ninja and wanted to help the Ninjas out. There. Now shut up about it.  

After I left the Gamecock office's where I promptly killed everyone in the entire building (Gamecock employee or not), I went to a Starbucks as I was very thirsty. I flirted with a beautiful waitress and we ended up sharing our life stories with each other. Of course, I had to kill her ... and everyone in the store that could have heard everything I had just revealed. One day I will find love damn it! I think all the killing made me forget to do something important though ... ah well.  

[Editor's note: Destructoid's servers are on Eastern time and I'm on Pacific time so it's so totally still Day of the Ninja. -- Ninjtendo]