Naruto: Ultimate Ninja
The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
Published: June 2, 2006
We have to hand it to Namco Bandai -- specifically the latter half of that company name. If it weren't for their love of Cartoon Network licensed shows, we'd probably be so out of the loop on what's going on with kids' TV shows these days that we'd never even think of touching games like this. And, not only would that start us down the path to Oldmansville, but we'd be missing out on some legitimately decent games.
The latest happens to be Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, a fighting game from Bandai's own CyberConnect2 studio (the same guys responsible for the .hack series). Most of our previous exposure to Naruto came in the form of 32438597529875932759325797500981234 music videos that were posted on YouTube (seriously, it's insane). Luckily, as we've had time to digest a little more of the game and a few episodes of the series, some of us in the office can at least appreciate that Namco Bandai isn't just paying the series lip service.
It goes beyond the obvious use of the TV show characters, of course. Ultimate Ninja at least attempts to piece together the various relationships and personalities of the characters on the TV show, though to be perfectly honest nobody here in the office really knows what the hell that is. Still, its' obvious some effort was put forth, and even dorks like us that don't really know the series can see that.
The game itself is a simple, one-round 1-on-1 fighting game that plays like something of a controllable seizure. It's ridiculously fast -- matches can be over in as little as a minute if you get caught in a handful of powerful attacks, but we had some fights that went almost five minutes against the normal AI. It might just be that we don't quite know what's going on half the time, but the game does seem fairly hard.
Across all game modes (the requisite story and practice modes are in place), the battles are more or less the same; tight, multi-tiered battles let you jump between the fore and background or up to a second tier, and in this second tier, there are areas that are accessible via a carefully timed double jump. At certain points during the match, but combatants have the ability to shift things to another stage, and if you happen to win the match, you're rewarded with bonus points for making this jump.
Each stage also offers a good dozen or so areas or people that have limited interaction; breaking a wall, for instance, can create a pit that you can use to knock an enemy down into, causing more damage. Hitting or approaching people littered throughout the levels will let you collect powerups that can restore health, increase attack, and so on, though there are some characters that will actually negatively affect the match (by, say, putting you to sleep if you get too close, for instance).
The latest happens to be Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, a fighting game from Bandai's own CyberConnect2 studio (the same guys responsible for the .hack series). Most of our previous exposure to Naruto came in the form of 32438597529875932759325797500981234 music videos that were posted on YouTube (seriously, it's insane). Luckily, as we've had time to digest a little more of the game and a few episodes of the series, some of us in the office can at least appreciate that Namco Bandai isn't just paying the series lip service.
It goes beyond the obvious use of the TV show characters, of course. Ultimate Ninja at least attempts to piece together the various relationships and personalities of the characters on the TV show, though to be perfectly honest nobody here in the office really knows what the hell that is. Still, its' obvious some effort was put forth, and even dorks like us that don't really know the series can see that.
The game itself is a simple, one-round 1-on-1 fighting game that plays like something of a controllable seizure. It's ridiculously fast -- matches can be over in as little as a minute if you get caught in a handful of powerful attacks, but we had some fights that went almost five minutes against the normal AI. It might just be that we don't quite know what's going on half the time, but the game does seem fairly hard.
Across all game modes (the requisite story and practice modes are in place), the battles are more or less the same; tight, multi-tiered battles let you jump between the fore and background or up to a second tier, and in this second tier, there are areas that are accessible via a carefully timed double jump. At certain points during the match, but combatants have the ability to shift things to another stage, and if you happen to win the match, you're rewarded with bonus points for making this jump.
Each stage also offers a good dozen or so areas or people that have limited interaction; breaking a wall, for instance, can create a pit that you can use to knock an enemy down into, causing more damage. Hitting or approaching people littered throughout the levels will let you collect powerups that can restore health, increase attack, and so on, though there are some characters that will actually negatively affect the match (by, say, putting you to sleep if you get too close, for instance).
