Game:

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm (2008)

Duration: 9:56:54

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1

Part 2. Well, let's start with the good. The game looks really nice. The character models look like their show counter parts, which is nice. You also get to explore the Hidden Leaf Village and run around and talk to NPCs and even some of your fellow ninja. Pretty cool. You control Naruto and to make progress you need to do side quests. The side quests rarely pop up on the map or mini-map, you have to go into the menu and find the quests there to complete. Once you have dne enough side quests and earned enough points you can unlock the actual story missions which follow along with the original Naruto series. Naruto doesn't control great and the camera moves like molasses with no option in the game menu to speed it up. As you wander around the Hidden Leaf Village you can collect scrolls which spawn in after every mission. If you get enough you can trade them in with Iruka Sensei and he will give you a new move or two. You can also collect items for trade quests, treasure chests that unlock new moves, ingredients for the shops for new battle items and even ingredients for ramen which gives your chakra a small boost. All nice little touches. Every mission you take has a few parameters you have to meet, whether it's beat a character with a certain move, beat the clock in tree climbing, or catch characters in under a certain time limit in the tree running. There are also a couple of other mini-games as well that utilize Naruto's exploring powers like tossing clones through rings. The game does feel like a budget game though and has a ton of padding for content. There are very few cutscenes and there isn't much voice acting. The story is mainly told through text boxes before missions. Sometimes for side stuff you do interact with some Naruto regulars, but it's minimal. The padding comes in the form of grinding missions out for their bonus obejctives, which unlock once you beat a mission. There's over 100 missions, so dpoing 100% would be a huge chore. It's also where the secret ending is locked behind. I did not do this. I haven't mentioned combat yet, which is honestly the largest focus. The game has lots of tutorials for many of the things in game, but they never really explain combat at all. So it's just pushing buttons and seeing what things do. They do have a move list like most fighting games, but this doesn't play like standard fighting games. You have one button for attacking, one for building chakra, one for throwing kunai and one for jumping. You can occasionally summon in one of 2 support characters to help with combat as well, which is cool. Combat feels a little clunky and not very responsive. Blocking is there and is pretty helpful, but you need to get the hang of the clone jutsu which is timing a block perfectly with an attack to get out of the way of moves. I mainly resorted to mashing the triggers which is not something I liked. I wish I could have rebound the block button to a shoulder button. As you progress the game you unlock other fighters as well and I never really touched the pure fighting side of things and never really felt the want to either. I mainly used Naruto outside of when I was forced to do so otherwise for story mission purposes. You can chose any of the fighters for a lot of the side stuff and anyone for a support role. That's pretty cool being able to play as your favorite ninja from the OG series. Honestly the game felt boring compared to the likes of Rise of a Ninja and the Broken Bond. They are way more fleshed out games and do a much better job with the story and combat and exploring and controls and everything. This game doesn't do anything offensive, it actually just does the bare minimum. It's not awful, but it's not all that good either. Enjoy my blind playthrough.

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