I'm a fairly big fan of anime but I have limitations to what I like. I don't really care for Dragon Ball Z and the few minutes I've caught of Naruto I wasn't overly impressed but it could have been the horrid dub voice of Naruto and this is coming from a fan of dubs.
So I rented Naruto despite my uninterested in it all together. As soon as I popped it in I was surprised by a number of things. Visually this game is a stunner. The cut scenes look fantastic with very sharp cell shading, some of the best this generation of gaming. The in game graphics are just a mild step down but the town, forest and even characters look good.
A few problems arise from there though as the game reuses a lot of models so you rarely run into enemies who look different and the town folk even look a lot alike.
I guess it wouldn't matter but the game also plays like a sand box title as you have many side quests and only 25 plot quests. The also also plays like a platformer, a fighter and it has little bits of a role playing game thrown in for good measures.
It can be a bit overwhelming at first but after a few minutes it becomes natural. A typical mission has you heading to a scroll marker on your map. From there a new marker appears and you head there. once outside the city you'll encounter not so random enemies and at this point the game turns into a fighting game.
If you've played any of the recent Dragon ball Z titles then you can imagine how this plays out but it isn't as over the top. You have two attack buttons, a weapon button, a jump button and a block button. The ideal way to play is to just do a reversal by blocking right before the attack hits and doing a nice combo.
There is more though as you have special moves, which are used outside of combat as well. These moves require you to hold the L trigger and push both stick in a specific pattern and then in another and then release the L trigger as the wave enters its zone. This is simple enough outside combat but it becomes near impossible unless you have dazed an enemy. So it kind of becomes useless except on rare occasions and when you do use it, it does some great damage if the enemy doesn't dodge.
As you play the enemy starts to use these moves as well which can be deadly for you. Not only that but you both get something called rage around the same time. The more damage you do and receive makes you angrier and once your meter is filed you go and do double damage and can't be hurt for x amount of time. Same for the enemy when he kicks it into over drive.
The fighting system is fun at first but because it's moves are a bit hard to pull off it becomes annoying. Some enemies are so fast you can easily be slaughtered and some just block everything and require so very fast thinking to hurt them and then suddenly they drop like flies.
Thankfully the game has a lives system which are called memos. You have four at a time and you can have them refilled or if you die three times on a boss it refills for you if you select it to. I found them to be very handy for almost all boss battles. You can also buy ramon which heals you but I don't know if you can use it during a fight as I never bought any...
The games world is fairly large but it becomes annoying quickly. The town is fun to explore and it feels much like Crackdown did with the extreme jumping and stuff. Once you leave though the game goes into a linear path with jumping over water, dodging swinging logs and jumping over bomb strings. It's rather simple but it also becomes boring.
Sadly things go a little more down hill when you open areas outside of the woods as you need to sprint up trees and you enter a lame mini game where you hop from one limb to another. It gets old quickly and you have to do it every time you need to go to that area and thankfully the game unlocks nothing but missions in that area but you need to accept them in town and travel all the way through the same mundane mini game again and again.
Within the game there are hidden coins and gold coins which are all sued to upgrade Naruto with new moves, stronger attack or defends or even new weapons. You may also need money to buy these things as well. Money is had from finishing missions or from battles.
The game has a lot of sub missions as well. You have hide and seek missions, delivery missions and race missions. None of which I found to be very interesting. You can also use your skill to turn into a woman to please some random men.
The games controls really hinder it at times though. In the open world Naruto runs at an insane speed that borderlines too fast to really control and this causes the jumping segments to be a bit harder than they should be. I also found that while the fighting controls were fairly tight they also felt limited in comparison to many other games.
The game follows the first 80 episodes of the anime. So I figured it would be a meaty game but in honesty it can be finished in 5 hours. The plot is shrunken down and basically you're a boy who everyone hates, you steal something and learn to become a ninja. The game ends on a cliff hanger but fans of the manga/anime should know what's to come.
The game does have some decent achievements and it felt like forever before I got one. The game will take a lot longer to get all of the achievements though. There is also on-line play which i didn't access because I really didn't want to but I haven't heard anything about it either. There are also downloadable characters to use but they cost money. You can also get a free download that gives you the original Japanese dialog which is nice because the dub voices are still terrible.
Fans of the anime will most likely love the game and for anyone who enjoys the Dragon ball Z games then they may enjoy this as well. if you're looking for a role playing title or even a platformer I'd recommend looking elsewhere. If the game focused on fewer genre types it may have been a little more fun and wouldn't have grown so boring after just a few hours.
Story - 7/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 7/10
Control - 7/10
Game Play - 6/10
Replay value - 5/10
Final Score - 6/10
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