GAMINGtruth

The Good

The platforming elements of Rise of a Ninja are pretty standard, but made fun by the unique environment and characters. The ability to run at insane speeds, jump across treetops, and run across water certainly help too. You can platform in the village freely to find hidden coins and villagers, and several of the minigames require you to. Outside of the village, platforming is usually designated. Either as a way of getting around a trap, or to reach extra coins.

One of the defining characteristics of the series is the concept of Chakra and Jutsu. To perform their magic-like techniques, the ninjas of Naruto form hand seals in various orders to invoke power. Ubisoft has uniquely replicated this using the analog sticks. When you learn a jutsu in the game, you are taught a series of directional presses on both sticks to activate it. Not only does it add a level of complication and timing to an otherwise overdone combat genre, it’s pretty damn fun and challenging.

The Bad

When you’re not on the path of the main story, you can idle away doing sidequests for villagers and your teachers. Unfortunately, almost all of these sidequests take you into the same 3 segments of forest outside of the Village, and have you fight the exact same 4 or 5 various bandit characters, over and over until you wish you could just rip that “Bandit Boss”’s head off. It could be that the game is secretly designed as an anger management tool, taking out your frustation on poor little bandits who have no skill when compared to you, but not likely.

The game is intended to focus on Naruto, and so as a fighter-third-person platforming role playing game, Naruto is where the focus lies. But this means little air time for several other characters, which is sad for us veteran fans, and possibly confusing to the not-so-much. Characters get thrown in for a few brief seconds, and then dramatic sequences shown later that otherwise would have had a lot of buildup. The story gets thrown around like this only a few times, but enough to stick to your memory of the game.

Recommendation

I’m going to say straight out first, for any Naruto fan, this is an obvious must buy. Especially for any gamer Naruto fan like me who has collected most of the previous titles. But this is not my ideal world where everyone loves Naruto and I can strike up a conversation about it just any old time.

So, where does that leave non-fans? Between a rock and a hard place, that’s where. Let’s face it, with Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect hitting shelves VERY soon, Ubisoft’s launch date for Naruto is a bit late. It will likely get overlooked and forgotten by the waves of commotion surrounding these other big Christmas launch titles.

So let me break it down a bit. Ninjas. Ninjas versus pirates (well, bandits, sorta close). Running on water, trees, over rooftops, kickingasstakingnamesandlotsofotherreallycoolthings. That about sums it up. Should you buy it? If you hate animes, no. If you love fighter games or platformers, then yes. You’ll have a blast and get introduced to a great story that’s already sweeping the US. The one downfall of the game is perhaps also it’s saving grace. It’s short. You can beat it a few days with plenty of time to spare for the other big titles coming out. Not to mention.. online fighter fun. The first online Naruto fighter! Dattebayo! (”Believe it!”)

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