advertisement

NARUTO IS LIKE THE little engine that could. At first he's obnoxious, and then you feel bad for him and want him to do well. Then he does well and becomes obnoxious again! Luckily, this is not a review of a cartoon character but of the game, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, which is based on a popular anime series. The game developers seemed to build a hybrid of gaming genres here. It is part plat former, part RPG and part fighting game and we have to admit, it pulls most of it off pretty well.

The story follows the first 80 episodes of the TV show. This is a lot of ground to cover in the space of a video game. It is for this reason that the story, while mostly there, seems missing out on a lot of character development. This is mostly felt during boss fights, where you don't know the villains or their relationships to the characters. The story unfolds through clips from the actual show. This can be a little jarring when switching from in-game cut scenes to clips from the cartoon show. The age of the cartoon shows and the in-game scenes really aren't pretty or well animated enough for story telling. We must admit it is fun to sit back and watch the cartoon clips, though, because they are when the bulk of the story is delivered and it seems like a much deeper show than the game demonstrates.

Most of the game takes place either in Leaf Village or the various forests on the outskirts. This village is fantastic and very well realised. It is built with the same open-world design which is so common these days thanks to GTA. At the start you are a bit limited with getting around the city but a few hours into the game you gain abilities to jump higher, further and run up walls or across water. This does a fantastic job of really opening the city up to you and making it fun to traverse across the rooftops and cutting corners to get places. We think it would be safe to say it's like the kiddies' version of Assassin's Creed in regard to getting around the open city – minus the stabbing people on rooftops.

While in the village, you run around and get missions from the citizens. This is where the RPG elements come into the game. You collect quests, money and coins around the village and then gain new abilities, level them up and buy equipment. An important feature in the game is Naruto's popularity; at the start of the game pretty much everyone hates you and it is your job to do little jobs and quests for people to make them like you. As more people start to like you - indicated by either a happy or frowning faces over their heads when you go past them – they will help you during quests by giving you directions towards your next goal.

Once you venture out into the forest the game takes on more of a platformer role. A lot of double jumping! Personally, I'm not a fan of jumping games but this wasn't too bad. There are no instant death jumps and nothing too challenging, either. There are times where you have a time limit and we think if you normally like that kind of thing in games, you'll love these ones and if you don't, then you won't. But we can say these aren't too bad, actually. Quite often (too often) you will get jumped by bandits while in the forest and thus begins the game's combat.

Combat is handled as a completely separate fighting game. The fighting system is actually a lot of fun. It's deep enough to be challenging but also forgiving enough that anyone could pick up and start playing. It is essential for you to learn and use new moves in the later level, however. Plus you will need to use Jutsus. These are special ninja powers in the game and cartoon show. It is these Jutsus that allow you to run along walls and water. They also let you transform into a hot female to confuse opponents during fights or cheer up lonely citizens back in the village. It sounds odd we know, but in this game's world it actually fits and adds to the fun and humour. There are many other Jutsus you will gain access to throughout the game. Most have uses both in and out of combat. During combat some of these turn into a timed button pressing mini game (a la God of War) to do extra damage to your opponent. We have to say, it starts to get really old really fast being jumped by bandits but it is exciting when you fight a different character during a storyline quest.

The music is great; we're assuming it's taken from the show. It's got a nice light hearted playfulness to it when you are running around town or a forest but it then has some pretty good action music for when you start to fight. The voice-acting is mostly good apart from the times when the characters in the games clearly have different voices to the ones in the cartoon clip you just watched. You will hear a lot of the same lines delivered after fights, but this is to be expected when you are playing with the same character through an entire fighting game.

The graphics are also a real pleasure to look at. This is thanks to the fantastic art direction. Leaf Village is just a joy to run through and feels very alive with all the characters walking around. The water especially looks pretty. The game uses the fairly standard cell-shaded art style for all the characters but the environments seem to be all in 3D with a bit of hand painted skill added in for good measure. The love and attention to detail shows, except when looking close up at the faces of the character models, which look plain awful up close. They are flat and have very little detail on them, which is a shame because it really hurts the in-game cut scenes.

The multiplayer allows you to take your fighting skills online to battle it out. There are a few tournament modes and it seems to play smoothly. Another bonus of this is it allows you to play as other characters from the story and try out some new Jutsus, which adds to the excitement. There also seems to be the promise of downloadable content in the future but we will have to wait and see what that could be.

Naruto feels like a game designed not just for fans of the show but as a way to introduce new people to the Franchise. It definitely does a good job of giving you the kind of feel the show must go for. After the first 2-3 hour slump it becomes incredibly fun to play through. It's got a fun fighting system, light RPG elements and good plat forming. All in all, while certainly not for everyone it is a really good game, which is better than the sum of all its different parts.