"Made for fans of the series, otherwise, avoid"

There aren't many fighting games on the Wii, and as such this stands up as a decent game. If you are looking for a deep fighting system, you won't find much here. For fans of the series, though, this game is worth a look, with a few caveats.

Story: 7.5/10
Personally, fighting games don't need a story, so it's nice to have an actual plot line in Clash of Ninja Revolution. I'm a fan of the Guilty Gear and Soul Calibur series and the plotlines there are thin to nonexistent. CoNR follows the anime series/manga fairly close and adds a nice depth to playing through the mission mode, but you won't find yourself coming back to play through that more than once, maybe twice. Why? Simply because to unlock all the characters you only need to beat mission mode once and then play the single player mode over and over and over and over again.

Graphics: 8/10
Obviously my score here is being scaled for the Wii. Still, in making the game look like the anime, the cell shaded characters look pretty good. This game won't win any awards, but the characters look nice, the backgrounds decent, but bland, however the shadows are atrocious. They shouldn't even be in the game they look so bad.

Sound: 7/10
Ah, voice acting. I tried to be fair with my score, but I prefer Naruto in Japanese. Alas, in the U.S. release, there is only English voice acting, which is pretty good for voice acting, but pales in comparison to the energy and emotion the Japanese actors are able to emote. If you haven't heard any of the Japanese voice acting, then this won't be much of an issue. The main problem I find with the sound in this game is simply the repetitive nature of the characters' quips while fighting. This, I believe, is mainly due to the limited and repetitive nature of the fighting system.

Music? Not much to talk about. It exists, but is hardly memorable. Sound fx? Good enough. Hence the 7 out of 10.

Gameplay: 5/10
This is where the heart of any fighting game should lie. Passable graphics and sound are necessary since they can cripple a playing experience, but nothing kills a game faster than bad gameplay . . . and that's exactly what this game has. The fighting, as mentioned numerous times, is repetitive. Every character has their own special jutsu moves, but otherwise, the fighting is the same for each character, with some differences in how fast they move and how much damage their attacks do. Basically, the females are faster, do less damage and throw more shurikens. The older characters do more damage than the younger ones. And that's about where the differences end.

As a fan of the series, the mini-cutscenes while doing a special jutsu move is satisfying as some are simply wicked to execute and watch. What I like and what you'd like is bound to be different, so I'll spare you the list of my favorites, but suffice it to say, some are more fun than others. Still, each character has no more than three jutsu moves (most have two) and all fighting combos are the essentially the same. For a fighting game about ninjas, the hand to hand combat is pretty bland and (oh, dare I use the word again) repetitive.

Controls are decent enough, though the wii-motion sensing weak attack can be rather imprecise when trying to string a combo together. If using the wiimote and nunchuk you can do extra damage during jutsus by making certain motions when prompted on screen. The motions rarely match what is going on on screen and the prompts distract from the mini-cutscenes of the special jutsus as you'll end up staring at the bottom of the screen waiting for the next move. More notably is the fact that the motion controls don't add any weight to the feel of the game. Yes, you are moving your arms and hands, but there is a disconnect between your movements and what is happening on screen. Hence all the cries from wii-haters about it being a gimmick.

There are your standard modes for a fighting game. Single player, survival, time attack and vs. cpu (just a match between you and a chosen cpu opponent). Single player is where you will spend most of your time as it is necessary to unlock all the characters. I hate this. I found it significantly detracts from the fun of the game to have to play through single player mode with each of the characters. This is gimmicky and a way for the developers to keep you interested in the game for longer than five hours . . . simply because you have to if you want to play as, say, Orochimaru.

The more notable modes are the aforementioned mission mode and co-op mode. The co-op mode is probably the most fun out of them all because you can have up to four players playing at one time. This makes the game much more exciting, but with the lack of a deep fighting system, it's more like a party game than something you'll want to set up tournaments with.

Minigames: 4/10
Minigames are tacked on to the game and they are a fun distraction, though you won't enjoy them for very long. Shuriken Training is probably the most fun and has the highest replayability. This mode is simply a shooting gallery with the wiimote and shurikens (ah, not real ones, unfortunately). Fun, but the pattern of characters popping never changes. Once memorized, this mode is pointless.

Shadow Clone Jutsu is also fairly decent, but only for a once or twice run through. This is simply a game using quick eye tracking and memory. It's the old "which cup is the ball under" game in which Naruto clones himself, moves around the screen and you have to pick which one was the original Naruto. Simple, somewhat fun, but hardly something you'll tell your friends about.

Rasegan Training is horribly stupid. You move the wiimote and nunchuk to simulate Naruto forming the Rasegan, then you push the controllers forward at the right moment. That's it and timing is the key here. And boy is it stupidly difficult to get the timing down the first, oh, twenty times. Once you have the timing down, you'll never touch this game again.

Conclusion: 6.5-7 out of 10
Fans of the series who are mildly interested should give this game a shot, but I'd say rent it first or play it at a friends place. The omission of certain characters is somewhat annoying, though there are still a good 20 characters to choose from. The lack of depth to the fighting system makes this game feel like a novelty after just a few hours of play. For people who haven't followed the series, you are better off looking in a different direction for a fighting game on the Wii.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/07

Game Release: Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution (US, 10/23/07)