Naruto vs. Shukaku in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm

By Spencer . July 22, 2008 . 8:50am

I talked about the versus mode before, but Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm has a lengthy single player story mode that goes all the way up to the rescue Sasuke arc. And yes, Sasuke transforms to cursed seal level two. I’m getting ahead of myself because I didn’t get up to the fight at the Valley of the End. I fought Gaara when he released Shukaku instead.

The battle uses the same engine used to power Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, but you can’t rush Shukaku since he is humongous. You can throw chakra charged shuriken while Shukaku spits bursts of sand. Projectiles damage Shukaku, but a fist to Gaara’s face is much more effective. When Shukaku lowers his head or punches the ground you can directly attack him. After you whittle down Shukaku’s life bar Naruto goes into quick time action mode where you follow commands similar to God of War. You follow a series of buttons to make Naruto summon shadow clones and barrage Gaara. Mashing a button makes Naruto push through a sand wave and slam Gaara in the face. The dramatic presentation does the anime justice and fans are going to love the little details CyberConnect2 kept in the quick time events. Shukaku is one of the David vs. Goliath fights. I think you can figure out the others. One involves a purple snake that rhymes with Panda.

Afterwards I played as Gaara who uses his sand burial as one of his ninjutsu attacks. As expected, Gaara has much more range than other characters since he attacks with swirling waves of sand. He also has the added benefit of occluding the camera’s vision with sand clouds. Tenten is usually one of my favorite characters to play as and she feels lightning fast in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. Instead of fighting with her fists Tenten summons weapons similar to Naruto Shippuden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX. From a distance Tenten uses her chain staff. Tenten’s fully charged ninjutsu unleashes a torrent of kunai, knives, blades, and other pointy weapons at an enemy. Shino’s ninjutsu is a bug tornado attack. The announced characters thus far are all of the genin. Namco Bandai hinted new characters may be available as downloads, but this isn’t a guarantee since they are still making decisions regarding downloadable content.

Images courtesy of Namco Bandai.

TAGS: CyberConnect2, E3 2008, Namco Bandai, Naruto, Playstation 3

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Pichi

Do you watch Naruto? If you don't watch Naruto, then you won't understand who Shukaku is or any of the characters. If this is your first time in the game and have no plans to watch the anime, probably best to see if you'll like the gameplay and if you do, play the game. Treat it like a new game experience and not a license game that you have watch it from, ONLY if your new all the way though, IMO.

Spencer

@Nex - Shukaku is Gaara's transformation into a giant one tailed sand beast. So it's like a giant monster versus ninja fight.

Aoshi00

I hope they won't be too stingy w/ the no. of usable characters, like DBZ Burst Limit, since they will be sequels to come, and I really don't feel like paying extra. That's what they would probably do though since people would eat up such a beautiful Naruto game.

I haven't played the Narutimate Heroes series yet, but the PS3 demo was fun, plus it has Jpn voices. I was pretty pumped by seeing this Shukaku fight in the trailer too, this makes "Rise of a Ninja" on the 360 look primitive.