Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm

"Did UNS actually live up to its hype?"

Before any1 argue with me about the score, I like to point out the an 8 according to gamefaq is consider the following: Great - fun to play, some minor but no major flaws.

Now that that's settle lets get into it.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm IS a fighting game so naturally that should be the focus of the game which it is IN FREE BATTLE MODE ONLY.

There are 25 characters and 5 transformation which adds up to 30 characters. All characters have at least 2 jutsu and 1 ougi. Unfortunately, CC2 has made it so the player MUST pick only 1 jutsu to use in battle at the character select screen. They do not fight alone; players may choose up to 2 support character each having at least 2 choice of support moves. Depending on how many support you choose, the rate at which the support may be summon can change. Some support have melee combos while some have powerful range attack to help combo and set up the enemies for throws, jutsu, another support, ougi and so on. After selecting the characters and their supports, the stages can be chosen. Unfortunately, theres really only 2 different types of stage out of about 10. You have your wide open stage with no walls for wall fighting and a type of stage where there is at least 1 wall where you can knock the enemy onto. Everything else is the same besides the color and background. The stages you select do not really affect the battle as much as I would have liked. Now that I've describe all the preparations for free battle mode lets talk about the actual fighting system.

Characters have 4 different combos, 1 air combo, 1 throw, ninja movement, dash, chakra dash, shuriken blah blah blah. Everything takes place in a 3D plane and the camera angle automaticly adjust as the players move about. Never did I get a "bad" angle in this game. The fighting is VERY fast pace and FUN and it is guarantee that you will have epic moments while playing this mode with either the computer or better yet a friend.

Sadly this game is nowhere near perfect all thanks to the dreadful story mode. CC2 decides to make the story mode very boring with mass amounts of mini games. Wait, if its full of mini games shouldn't it be fun you ask? Well it just so happens there mini games are exact duplicates of each other. You either run up a giant tree, run through a giant forest, play hide and seek with konohamaru, or... o wait thats pretty much it >.>. These mini games will meet you at EVERY SINGLE ARC in the story and worse yet some appear more than once in an arc. Even worse than that is that you MUST replay them to get 100% to get a true ending because CC2 decides we can't do a bonus condition the first time around. Well what about the actual story you ask?

The story mode skips over the zabuza arc completely, and will leave people new to naruto extremely confused as to what really happens in the story. This is due to the lack of cutscenes. Even with all their great graphics, CC2 made about 5-6 cutscenes for the entire game. This was truely disappoint since they claim they were focusing on the single player aspects of the game. By not having the Sound 4 in the game, CC2 thought they would do the rescue sasuke arc with 5 different fights of kimimaro.

Overall, this is a great game for fans of naruto and of the ultimate ninja series. The fighting system is fun which is key in any game. However many factors may leave fans disappointed when compare to the previous ultimate ninja games nh3, accel 1/2. The lack of cutscenes, ougis, jutsu, online capabilties as well as the fact that there is such long periods of time between dlc of support only characters and a few boring missions.

Note this review was made 11/8/08.
For those that are fortunate enough to have a choice of either Naruto storm or Broken Bonds
rent and see which game you prefer instead of being committed to one.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/10/08

Game Release: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm (US, 11/04/08)