Inspired mud makes Fruit Ninja, but it’s a Counter-Strike 2 aim trainer

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One of the earlier smartphone hits was Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja, released in 2010. It had that magical combination of simplicity alongside an irresistible level of difficulty: not to mention that cutting pieces of fruit with a virtual knife is just incredibly satisfying . It turns out that blowing them away with an AK-47 also works.

Mud Lillykyu and artist Ethurs have brought Fruit Ninja to Counter-Strike 2 and turned it into an aim trainer for the largest competitive FPS in the world. Available now in the Steam workshopthe Fruit Ninja aiming trainer offers three modes, a variety of fruits, and of course manages to integrate the bomb.

In classic mode, you stand in front of a small window with an AK-47 where (initially) watermelons are thrown into the air at different angles, you shoot them and they explode into satisfying red chunks. You have three lives, losing one with each miss, and after a few dozen watermelons, smaller fruits and bombs appear in the mix: if you shoot a bomb, like in the original Fruit Ninja, you lose a life.

I don’t really know how to rate it as an aim trainer, but is it fun? Yes, and especially when you start messing around with practice mode. In it you can switch between weapons and, more importantly, set the spawn rate for the fruits and bombs, and then ramp them up to ridiculous levels: the result is a shooting range full of pieces of fruit flying everywhere, where you have infinite lives, which means you can pop your five a day.

The mod even has a third offering: 360 mode, which is the only part that put me off a bit. It gives you 30 seconds in a circular arena, surrounded by tons of watermelons bouncing out of a moat, and you have to blow up as many as you can. The background for this level is a bit blurry and with all the spinning I had to do and the noise of splashing watermelons turning back into the water, it wasn’t quite enough for me.

I just started the training again and unloaded fully automatically into a satisfying waterfall of fruit. This won’t change Counter-Strike 2, but I can easily see it fitting into my small rotation of warm-up maps: it’s just very satisfying to shoot watermelons.