User Review : Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3

Ups

• Plenty of characters to use, each with their own personal touch.{The battle system: easy for beginners to learn, difficult to master.{It's just fun! Plus, the option to switch between English and Japanese audio.

Downs

• The uncreative, uncustomizable level up system{THE most boring story mode EVER!{It takes a LONG time to unlock moves and characters.

Don that head band one more time...

Usually, video games based on television shows turn out to be... less than stellar (I mean seriously, Jimmy Neutron: Attack of the Twonkies? Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy: Scam of the Century? Please.), but sometimes, there's a hidden gem in the bunch that's way better than the rest. However, this isn't exactly it.

Bring it on!
-We all know who Naruto is: that spunky, cocky orange jumpsuit wearing ninja wannabe who graced American television stations after being so popular in Japan. I mean, every year there's a new game with his name on it that sells a lot. So it's no surprise that Naruto has yet an another game. However, if you're going to make a game, you should make it fun, right?

For the most part, that is what Naruto seems to do. It's a 2-D fighting game where two characters duke it out in the many enviroments of the Naruto universe. However, the fighting in this game is different from games like Soul Calibur or Dead or Alive. You don't really HAVE to learn tricky combos to beat your opponent, you just need to be a good button masher and have a few tricks up your sleeve. You press Circle to punch your foes, and rapidly pressing circle allows you to pull an easy combo. You do that, and you can take down at lot of opponents. However, there are ninja elements to the fighting. You can find items to throw at the enemy (like fire bomb kunais, caltrops [or mitsubisi spikes], and multiplying shurikens) to help whittle down their health.

Of course, that's all fine and dandy until your opponent starts to pull off those killer combos that you see on Youtube. Then is where you need to take your game one step further and learn to substitute (replacing your character with a block of wood and then appearing behind them by pressing the shoulder button at the right time) and use jutsus and Ultimate techniques. Jutsus can be used by pressing down, down circle or up, up circle in quick succession, but Ultimate Jutsus are quite tricky. You have to get a certain amount of "chakras" (or energy) and then press triangle to "prep" yourself, and then pressing circle. You'll then do a special attack that, if it successfully hits, takes you to a cut-scene where, while your character do their signature moves, you have to play a mini-game where you either have to mash one button, rotate the analog sticks, or input the button commands more than your opponent.

It all sounds exciting, and for the most part it is. While the game simple enough for novices to get the hang of the game, it's deep enough for seasoned fighting veterns to completely dominate in. However though, there are a few flaws in the game design. One of them is the inclusion of a "Ultimate Technique cancel," where if you beat your opponent in those mini-games by more than 3, than the technique is cancelled. It may sound fun from your end of the stick, but it's not fun when no one can do their Ultimate Techniques because their opponents keep beating them in the mini-games. not only that, when you first start playing the game, you only have 1-2 Ultimate techniques, which is extremely dull. Instead of having a technique for every level of chakra you have (3 levels), you can only bring ONE technique to battle, and you have to not only unlock the technique (in story modes), but you need to find the items that ALLOWS you to even do the technique, which means you need a LOT of patience in order to get your character's favorite moves (which, thankfully, everyone has at least one, so maybe you'll use characters like Kabuto and Shizune. I know I'm gonna be Anbu Kakashi!)

Even better in this game is the inclusion of people's "second form." That's right, you can reenact the Nine-Tailed Possessed Naruto vs. Curse Mark Sasuke (level 2) battle anytime you want after unlocking them! Some other characters have second forms such as the Sound 4 and Gaara which can be used by using a certain Ultimate Technique (one complainant: you CAN'T turn off that annoying "announcement" that you changed forms. So if you transform in Curse Mark Sasuke, it shows you a screen with his face on it. It's not annoying at first, until you seen it a hundred times. One thing that sounds good on paper that didn't draw me in was the inclusion of summonings where you can summon (for examples, Tsunade's slug monster) monsters to fight as for about 10 seconds. It sounds cool alright, but they stay in one spot and only have two moves. I wanted it to be fun, seeing how big of a Naruto fan I am, but I just wasn't feeling it.

Whoa, he can't do that move!
-One of my biggest complainants is the new customizable jutsu, where out of a small list, you can choose which jutsu to use, just like in the previous games. In terms of customization, it's a good concept. However, when you have Hinata doing Sasuke's Chidori and Zabuza doing Guy's Dynamic Entry, it totally takes away from their character. How could shy little Hinata learn such a technique and Zabuza wouldn't be caught dead doing a jump kick like that. I mean, every character has their own way of walking, attacking, blocking, etc., and with the number of characters in this game, that's truly an astonishing amount of detail! And it's all ruined because most people will pretty much teach Chidori to everyone.

Another complainant is the level up system. I loved Ultimate Ninja 2's level up system because you can set the perimeters of their stats. You could max out their speed if they're slow, their defense to go with their attack, etc. However, none of that happens in Ultimate Ninja 3. You simply do missions (and I use that term loosely) to level them up. all their stats gets an upgrade so instead of changing your character's stats to better fine tune them, all you're doing here is just turning them into a powerhouse. However though, one feature I like about this is that experience is shared to all of your characters, so you don't have to worry about training them (which is good because there's a lot of characters here.)

Once upon a time, Naruto beat the crap out of this guy. The end.
-Like most fighting games, you unlock characters through a story mode. And just like most fighting games, story mode sucks. There's two story modes here: Ultimate Contest and Hero's History. In Ultimate Contest, where you'll unlock the bulk of the secret characters, techniques, items to perform the techniques, etc., you pretty much just run around doing errands for characters so that you may unlock stuff. It's truly dull, but it's also weirdly fun going on "dates" with characters (by dates, I mean just hanging out). However, most of the time you'll just want to skip those and just unlock stuff.

To unlock more stuff, you need to play Hero's History, which is like most fighting game's story mode. You just fight. You can hear/ read the short conversations and dialogue to know what's happening, but they're so short and uneventful that you might as well watch the anime (except for the last CGI cut-scene, which is pretty much what happened at the end of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc). Plus, you skip a majority of events in the game (like Hinata vs. Neji in the Chunin Exams, or this character vs. this character), which even makes this even more boring.

Closing Comments
-But who plays fighting games for the story anyway? It's all about the adrealine-inducing combat! For the most part, Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3 truly delivers. The characters are nicely detailed as they walk, attack, etc. just like they would in the anime, and seeing plenty old and new locations in the Naruto Universe makes this game even more appealing (although I'm heartbroken that my favorite level's (the Memorial Stone) camera angle changed and that there's no rain (which really brought out a depressing, dark, onimous feeling). However, new levels make up for that (a little) like the Valley of the End, where Naruto and Sasuke have their famed battle.

Most people found a reason to dislike the Naruto series, and they hate the games because of that. I'm not a biased kind of person; I judge games on their quality and I have to say, Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3 is pretty much of an awesome fighting game. Naruto fans should definately pick this one up.

Score

9.0

Graphics

I love fighting games, so this might be a little biased. I love the "feel" you get when you hear your punches contact your opponent (other games like Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive just feels so... cushioned) However, I didn't give it a 10 because unforunately, playing story mode counts as

8.9

Sound

Nice cel-shaded graphics, plus an amazing amount of detail for each character and locations (except for a few). And the CGI cut-scenes, while brief and unplentiful, are just awesome.

7.0

Gameplay

Oh man, someone turn off that darn noise the games makes while navigating the menu screen (the one where it sounds like someone's yelling "Yo!")! However, to be fair, both the English and Japanese audio is decent, but the games music totally drowns them out.

8.0

Fun Factor

(Note: if you love Naruto, give this an extra point) It's fun trying out different characters, testing them out and playing how it suits you. Story's too boring to really get excited for, especially since you have to meet certain conditions while fighting with an incompent A.I.).

Overall

9.0