Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm (PS3, Bandai Namco Games, NA: Nov 2008)

I'm not particularly into Naruto nor into fighting games, but due to certain circumstances I found myself purchasing this at GameStop yesterday and immediately began to play.

First impressions?

Gameplay: As I mentioned earlier, I am not entirely an expert on fighting games, and thus at first I was a little intimidated by the thought of having to spice up my combo skills in order to get anywhere in the game. These worries turned out to be in vain. Naruto Storm turns out to be quite the casual fighting game, allowing users to break in flashy 10-15 hit combos just by a sequence of mashing the circle button. After the first 3 or so battles, things were already beginning to fall into place and I found myself getting the hang of battles faster than I had expected. Now that I've mastered getting those combos down, I'm not entirely sure what to aim for next. Hopefully the rest of the game will not be too easy. I guess I'll keep playing to find out.

The minigames that are included in the story mode (Ultimate Misison Mode) are cute and addicting, comprising of fast-paced dodging trees and picking up items along the way. However, the addictiveness wears out once you realize that dodging trees were the only thing you would ever be able to do. Oh, and playing hide-and-seek with Konohamaru. Having a wider variety of this would be much needed in the next Naruto game.

Art: Unbelievable. I don't know how they managed to do it, but the graphics look like they were taken straight from the anime series. They even allow full dynamic camera control to give you the full experience of Konoha Village as well as the jutsus from your favorite Naruto characters. Nothing like I've ever seen before.

NA Version: I cringe at Naruto's dubbed voice, but other than that the others were surprisingly pretty decent / well done. That said, however, it saddens me that some of the characters' personalities were lost in translation. Lee's passion for youth and Shikamaru's laziness (めんどくさりや) were not quite portrayed as well as they should have.

But...! Thank god they have dual audio available!! Hearing the Japanese voices makes me happy. :)

Ending Remarks: A must-play for any Naruto fan, but will probably fall short for any die-hard fighting game player. This game was targeted towards casual gamers, and most definitely does well as a casual fighting game to play with friends. Karen's rating (may change when clearing the game): 8/10