Recently we’ve been playing around with an English build of Naruto Ultimate Ninja (i.e. the North American version of Naruto: Narultimate Hero). To bring everyone up to speed about the game, it is a 2D fighting game created by CyberConnect2 (.hack series) where Konhoa’s best ninjas face off on the battlefield. Let’s start talking about scenario mode, which is one of the single player modes in the game. You start out by picking a character from the series and you will follow them through a series of six story based fights. At the beginning Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, Rock Lee and Shikamaru are open to play. Before battles take place your character of choice will have a small chat session against the opponent. This takes place on a comic book / manga background and then you’re brought into combat. The style of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja is one of the factors that makes the game so neat. It uses cel shading, but the result makes the characters look like they’re out of the manga. When you jump into combat you can start punching away by using the circle button. Every character has a three hit combo, with a launching attack to throw an opponent in the air. Once airborne Kakashi (or whoever you choose) can hit the opponent and slam them back to earth with style. Each character also has a few signature techniques such as Naruto’s sexy justu combo, Sasuke’s phoenix fireball combo and Lee’s leaf whirlwind combo that take off a little chakra to use. When you use a chakra combo the action freezes for a few seconds while you watch a combo execute. However, this doesn’t really compare to checking out the full out multi tiered chakra attacks in the game. This is where the game’s style shines. I could write about how cool the attacks are, but I thought you guys would rather watch the specials in action. Below are two videos that showcase Naruto: Ultimate Ninja’s gameplay.
This video starts off at the beginning of Neji’s scenario. So you can see some of the beginning menus and watch a fight between Lee and Neji. Eight trigrams Sixty Four palms!
This video is a fight between Sasuke and Kakashi. Before the battle I highlighted some of the other fighting arenas that are available in the game. Also this fight shows off how the partner attacks come into play. Watch closely at the end when Sasuke is using the Sharingan, once activated he fights with Kakashi’s moves such as the Thousand Years of Pain technique.
