Naruto: Rise Of A Ninja

Set in a sandbox representation of the village hidden in the leaves, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja starts off being quite enjoyable.

The combination of a pseudo platforming sandbox mixed with a beat 'em up style fighting system seems like a good idea, and gets the feel of the show quite nicely, with decent graphics and a reasonable engin it should be a winner right? WRONG!!! and here is why. The first few fights are reasonable challenging, while you learn the combat system, a combo based button masher with overlong special moves (the Jutsu's) that are very hard to pull off correctly, once you start to get the fell a the starting opponents are not to much trouble however a few story fights in i found my self wanting to bang all of my electronics together.

One fight in particular i had to do about 8 times, because i could not seem to land a single blow on the jerk i was fighting, and had half the starting health of my super hard opponent. I finally got through this fight, by reloading an earlier save grinding my self silly doing all of the race and searching challenges multiply times and even then i only just made it, but then about three hours laters, after i had done everything i could to increase my health, a fight comes along where Health and Charka (mana) is capped at 500 right at the end, you lose a the top level of your powers, a very useful rage ability and are then expected to fight a ridiculously hard opponent (harder than the last recounted one), twice, and if you fail then your dump back to the loading screen with a very nice 'you lose' gloat form the game. In the works of 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, 'Stupid games get to fluff' off'!!

I would really only recommend this game to someone who really, really, really wants to be the Incredible Hulk!

Oh and the achievements are just as obtuse and hard to achieve, mostly requiring you to finish half to the game, i'm not asking for babies first on everyone, but come on a few easier ones would be nice!

Great for all Naruto fans. I love these titles. Always fun loads to collect and a great way to relive the Naruto story ^^

This is a game I got into right away, personally before this I had only played one other Naruto Game, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2.

Compared to Rise of a Ninja however thats quite lame. You get to interact with the villagers a lot and there are several minigames and little missions for you to go and do. The entire world was free roam which I loved compared to how restricted Ninja Storm was. I particularly liked how it had clips from the anime to explain the story and that you learnt and performed the Jutsu on your own rather than them being automatic =)

Can't wait to get Broken Bonds now!!

While I'm an anime fan, Naruto never really appealed to me for some reason. So when Naruto: Rise of a Ninja came through my door I popped it into the old Elite with optimism and a little apprehension.

The first thing that strikes you is how smooth everything is. In fact I was pleasently surprised more than once at how Ubisoft Montreal weaved the gameplay and plotline into that of the anime, using the original animation as cutscenes to great effect. Far from a tacked on cash-in, the crew have obviously thought of fans of the series when crafting this.

The game itself is a quirky mix of RPG and fighting. You play the orange-suited Naruto (looking wierdly like a junior member of Slipknot without a mask) as he works his way up the ninja ranks in his quest to become Hokage. If this all means nothing to you, don't worry; it meant nothing to me as well. But the narrative is such that you pick up all the relavent information along the way, so you never feel lost in the lore as it were. Locations are reached by running or through taxing if not a little repetative tree-jumping sections. Kudos to Ubisoft for making traveling about a little more than just staring at a loading screen, but as you near the end of the game you'll be jetting about from place to place and the tree-jumping starts to grate pretty damn quick.

The fighting aspect of Naruto is by far it's strongest. Attacks are split simply into weak and strong, with combos and specials unlockable as you level up. The addition of 'Jutsus' spice up the otherwise standard fighting engine. Holding one of the triggers and flicking both sticks in certain directions allows you to perform special attacks which, if pulled off through a series of QTE button presses, take huge chucks out of the enemy health bar. Granted, these can be insanely tricky to use in some of the later battles (when they're REALLY needed) but all the same...

The story, as I mentioned before, is good and strong and provided you don't despise anime and/or Naruto, you should find it pleasing and at some parts even engrosing. The lad himself is a likable mix of joker and hero, and certain scenes will warm even the coldest of FPS demon hearts... maybe.

Naruto: Rise of a Ninja has not wormed it's way into my heart nor my top games list. But it suceeded in giving me a few days of fun and a few hours of pad throwing rage (wait for the last boss folks...) which I suppose is the basic goal any game has. It's no SF4 or Fallout 3, but if you're looking for a dash of harmless, crazy and at times genuinely funny gaming, look no further. Rent for sure.

7/10

Alternatives: Street Fighter 4, Dragon Ball Z Budokai series