The Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series is known far and wide throughout the anime gaming scene. It's often revered as some of the best anime adaptation games out there, but just as often damned as the worst. Before we continue, I need to mention this: I'm a HUGE Ultimate Ninja fan (Story time! Everyone gather 'round). I remember buying my first Naruto game (the very first Ultimate Ninja); I had gone to GameStop with my one of my pals and his mom 'cause he had reserved some new $60 game and had to pick it up. As for me, I headed straight for the "Under $20" sign. I shuffled aside all sorts of games but nothing caught my eye. Then, all of a sudden, I came across a pinkish box with a vaguely familiar, yellow haired, bright orange jump-suited ninja with what looked like some of his companions on the front. Soon, it came to me. "Oh yeah!" I (for some reason) exclaimed aloud, "This is the guy from that one show on Toonami!" It looked cool and was (more importantly) cheap so i decided to pick it up. When I got home, I unplugged my, at the time, new Gamecube, plugged in my PS2 and gave the game a go. I was IMMEDIATELY hooked. From the cel shaded visuals, the awesome (yet simplistic) combos, and the flashy attacks, I only wanted more.
Luckily, because I had gotten into the game late, 2 was right around the corner. It truly amazed me. With its retelling of the anime's story (usually with much more action and much less talking), the additional characters, and the new open-esque world story mode, it was all my young heart could have hoped for. It didn't stop there though, around the holiday season, Ultimate Ninja 3 came out! If you could imagine my excitement, multiply it by 10 because by now I was a true Naruto fan and I knew this game would be the true Naruto experience. Why, you ask? Three words: Naruto vs. Sasuke. Not to mention its over 40 character roster. Just to put in perspective to you how good this game was, I sunk more than 200, count em': 200 hours into this game! And on that helluva high note, the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series came to a close. Now, there WERE Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja games, but 5 never came to the States and, well, we don't talk about 4. Then occurred the Great Drought. See, at this point in my life, I didn't have much internet access besides the local library, so everything I heard was by word of mouth, and there weren't any words coming from anyone's mouth about a new Naruto game. Then "it" happened. Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm. A 3D, PS3 exclusive fighter with visuals SURELY handed down by the gaming gods themselves. I remember my first time playing, I was simply blown away.
WOAH, look at those graphics! GASP do you see those super cool combos?! DEAR GOD Dat Ultimate Jutsu! I got the game and it was better than I ever could have hoped (Minus the Zabuza Saga). Now, about here is where I had what I'm calling my first real gaming journalist moment. I thought, "Hm, the old Ultimate Ninja games were cool, but they're all kinda... same-y." Besides graphical improvements, story, and character updates, not much from Ultimate Ninja 2 onward changed (biggest change in 2 was the aforementioned open-ish world). This became a major selling point for me in this series, what's changed. The combat is always good, the story is always well told, and the graphics are always wonderful . So the games will always be good, but what is it that will push me to spend $60 on the latest installment on release? For Storm 2, what got me out at 12 AM to walk to GameStop was quite a few things. First of which being its honestly daunting story progression. I mean this went from the end of the original series to the Pain fight (which was past the manga at the time). The next thing was online play. "Cyber Connect 2? You I can take these skills I've been honing for years to people all over the world? Take. My money. Now!" Lastly, and the highlight of this game, were the boss battles.
They are so flashy and put the anime fights to SHAME. The next in the Storm series is Generations. Now honestly, I didn't get into Generations until recently. I didn't much care for the Substitution Gauge or the Chakra Dash and they cut out the boss fights, so I was impartial to it until a friend let me borrow it to get ready for Storm 3. He challenged me to a fight and, of course I took him on. I took my Storm 2 fighting stance (meaning I had my trigger fingers on the L2 and R2 buttons like attack dogs begging to be freed) and the fight began. I don't know what happened, but by time I had blinked, I was dealt with and Sasuke had restored his clan upon my backside. This is when I realized that Naruto had finally risen into the ranks of a TRUE fighting game. See, in a true fighting game you need strategy as much as you need skill, and that's just what the Substitution Gauge gave us. These games are what make CC2 my favorite developers. Because they seem to be one of the only developers that LEARN as they go, how to make a truly amazing game. So here I am, prepared for all of CC2's infinite knowledge to be bestowed upon me. I played the Storm 3... beat it... and was shocked, scared, and confused. Why, you ask again? (My, aren't we full of questions) Because I had complaints; a few complaints.
But before we get into the bad, I think I should tell you about the good, which there is a lot of. I think it's best to start with the story, which is quite lengthy. The main events of the story took me about a good 11 hours (including cutscenes) to complete, with 11 chapters including the prologue. Each chapter is nice and long and I can almost guarantee you'll go "That was only 1 chapter?!" after about all of them. One big thing that came from Story Mode is the prophesied return of quick time event boss fights. CC2 truly out did themselves this time, with the Naruto vs Sasuke fight in particular sticking out in my memory. The story contains a mix of cutscenes, linear exploration, and, of course, fighting. There's also a new hack n' slash mechanic that shows up about 4 or 5 times that's actually a ton of fun. But for now, let's move onto the modes. Those being Free Battle and Online Mode. In Free Battle, you have the option to either fight one on one, in tournaments, in a practice mode, and eventually the survival mode, which returns from Generations. All of these modes do what they're supposed to, and quite spectacularly. This is due to the AI being a nice little challenge. I usually go there before heading online and crank it up to super hard as a warm-up. Now the online, oh the online, is WONDERFUL. There's a new assortment of modes, including tournament, perpetual tournament (it's a tournament mode with varying conditions tacked on), and an endless battle mode for those who wanna duke it out for hours on end. Let me tell you now, I'm addicted to the tournaments. It's so fulfilling knowing that YOU were the "Ultimate Ninja" in the room as you walk away with your trophy screaming "Told ya so!" And the 80+ characters don't hurt either. I'm a personal fan of the new Jinchurikis. There's also this other really cool new thing called ultimate decision. It lets you either choose the harder way to do things (the Legend choice) or the easy way (the hero choice). It's really cool and adds a layer of interactivity to the game.
Though, and for the first time in this series for me, the good does come with the bad. First off, story mode. As usual CC2 did there own little interpretations of certain scenes but nothing too crazy, until about the last 30 minutes. I don't wanna give too much away, but honestly I'm STILL wondering what went wrong. It was like they didn't have the source material and just said "Screw it, we do what we want!" It's really weird and leaves more questions than if they would have went with the cliff hanger ending that would have been far more appropriate. Anyone who reads the manga will be confused and anyone who watches the anime will be even more confused because this goes "past the anime" (in quotes because it's not cannon). Alright, now that that's out of my system, lets move on to the story's next problem. It is a serious slog fest. I know that's what I should be expecting, but seriously! I'm talkin' Metal Gear Solid 4 cutscenes! Also, the "exploration," if that's what they wanna call it, are nothing more than dull hallways. Two dull hallways to be precise, before the next cutscene. Then, after you beat the game, they open up the world to explore and it gets no better. CC2, hear me now, fixed camera angles are never, EVER gonna be okay for exploration. I honestly let out a sigh of disdain every time I boot up story mode, just for what could have been. What happened to the exploration from Storm 1? Remember that? Remember climbing up to the tallest building in the Hidden Leaf and using a shadow clone to fling you halfway across the map? What happened to that? And don't give me that "Because it went multiplatform" line. The Xbox has plenty of perfectly large games; so what if they're on 20 discs? Now, the boss battles. Let's talk about them. As I said before, they're awesome and flashy and STILL put the anime to shame, but I prefer the ones in Storm 2. Those fights were just far more appealing to the eye. And a lot of fights that should be, aren't boss battles. Like I said, though, I don't wanna give TOO much away but permit me one example. Sasuke vs Danzo ISN'T a boss battle (Cause that wasn't important right?). There's a FEW like that and that just shouldn't be. Also, even though I did say it's a slog fest, at points it seems very rushed. That's understandable though, seeing as they're trying to stuff a 30 minute episode into a bit of dialogue between a few characters, but even the pacing of the conversations seem off sometimes. Like, a character will reply too quickly to another whereas some silence between words would have fit better. Though, outside of story mode, I don't really have any complaints, so I guess with that we can move onto my final thoughts.
This review begs many questions and I'm gonna try to answer them here. "Does this game change enough to warrant a buy now?" Yes. "Does this game get enough right to warrant a buy now?" Yes. "Is this game BETTER than the other games?" Yes. " Does this game capture you like the others?" Sadly, no. As someone who reads the manga, the games are never a shock to me because I know what happens. But it's the retelling, the interaction, the feeling of BEING a part of whats going on that brings back those feelings for me in these games, and while this game has this to some degree, it doesn't and seems to throw away these chances at some points. Though, no matter what, this IS the best Naruto game to date and deserves its title. If I gave out scores (which I don't know if we'll do here yet), I'd give it a solid 8\10. The game is outstanding outside of Story Mode, but it's a very story driven game. If you're a fan of the series, it's a must own. If you're not, then I'd still recommend you give it a try. This has been Aesop (in my longest review), and I'm off. See you next time.
SIDENOTE: If you're reading this, I doubt you don't know this but CC2 took a page from the book of Capcom and have the Edo Kages AND Kinkaku\Ginkaku NOT as playable characters, though being fully made with combos and everything. This is a link to a petition to have them as free DLC that will eventually be sent to CC2. If you could please sign it because, though I'm sure they'll eventually bring them out as DLC, I'm equally as sure it'll be payed DLC. So here's the link (will open in a new window): Click Here and thanks for reading.
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