raise of a hyper active knuckle head ninja

I got Naruto Raise of a Ninja last week when I finally found it mark down to 30 bucks. I decided to give it a go because in till the fillers hit on CN Naruto was a pretty good show. Anyways when it comes to games you have good ones and you have stinkers, in raise of a ninja is a good one. In fact there are only a few small problems with the game that keep the hyper active knuckle head ninja from being a really great game.

Story.
12 years ago a nine tail fox attack the village hidden in the leaves. The 4th hokage sacrificed himself to seal the evil demon into a new born baby named Naruto. Because he has the demon fox inside him Naruto grows up being feared and hated by the villagers. But not one to be discouraged Naruto has a plan to change all that, to become the next hokage so people can respect him. But first to get past the ninja academy final exam, 4th times the charm.

The game follows the first 80 episode of the series from Naruto finally becoming a Genin to him battling Gara in the Chunin exams. The game is a cliff note to the series but a few things have been skip and even the video clips have been cut down and edit for a fast cliff note version of the story. Still it was better then what I expected the retelling of the story to be.

Graphics.
Graphics are a bit of a mixed bag but not in a bad way, just that realistic images and cel shaded characters is something you don’t really see much of. The characters in Raise of a Ninja are all cel shaded and look and move just fine with the exception of there faces, whenever a camera moves in for a non anime cut scene you see there faces and the characters look awful, luckily these are few and far between and the camera keeps far enough way to keep that from happening. The settings though are more realistic especially things like the water to darker hues in the buildings. What this means is that the leaf village feels like a real place despite the cartoony characters that inhabit it. With the exception of some really odd looking faces the graphics are really great.

Sound.
We get a lot of music from the series and fans of the series should recognize the easy going music that plays while exploring the village. Voice wise 50% of the actors from the TV series make an appearance in the game. The voices of the major ones like Nartuo, Sakura, and Sasuke remain unchanged. But some of the minor ones like the 3rd Hokagi and Jairai have been given the amateur treatment. Not only do the new voices suck but since they keep the old one for the anime clips this leads to a really distracting voice mishmashes for some of the scene in the game.

Gameplay
Naruto Raise of a Ninja takes 3 types of gameplay and combines them, while neither one is going to win the greatest ever design they do all function well and work well together. The 3 kinds are an open world GTA design, a virtua fighter 3d fighter design, and some platform elements.

The first element and the one you will be spending most of your time is in the open world of the leaf village. Like the anime when you first start all the villagers will hate Naruto and will shout out insults at him has he runs past, and if he asks help and info for a mission they will tell him to get lost. But has more missions are completed and more people are helped the more the villagers will like Naruto and if asked for help they will supply an arrow on were to head to next in order to complete the mission.

While doing these missions you will acquire health and chakra upgrades along with cash to buy items and training points to acquire new attack combos and new jutsus. Now there are 3 type of jutsu that Naruto will learn and level up along in the course of the game. They are Shadow Clones, Sexy Jutsu, and Chakra Concentration. Jutsus are pretty easy to perform involving the L trigger and the two analog sticks to make simple hand signs, and it works well. Sexy Jutsu while funny is pretty worthless and is only used to cheer up a few of the lonely guys in the leaf village. Shadow Clones will allow you to break down doors and open new paths outside the village. While Chakra Concentration will allow Naruto to walk on water and climb up walls. The leaf village is large and has plenty of secrets to use these jutsu on. The leaf village is easily the best part of the game has it feels like your actually exploring a key place in the Naruto story line and have free range over the place.

Outside of the village though are all pretty linear platforming parts. There not bad parts but there pretty simple run and jump and dodge things while getting to the next area to complete your missions. Outside of the village is were most of your fights happen. While you explore these platforming parts you will be ambushed by bandits and rookie ninjas. The battle then switches to the virtual fighter system.

The system is pretty good for the most part. It’s simplistic but it’s deep enough to be fun. The idea of the system is to hit your opponent with powerful combos and knock them to the side long enough to power up a jutsu. When you power up a jutsu a circle will go around Naruto and you will have time it to were it hits a bar in order for it to go off successfully. If you miss a bar you will loose your chakra and end up with Naruto just farting. If done successfully the jutsu will take place, chakra concentration raises attack, sexy jutsu confuses opponents, and shadow clones is your direct damage jutsu. Now these direct damage jutsu do a lot of damage but there not a sure fire hit if done. In Naruto case you have to press buttons has they appear on screen before the opponent does in order to score hits while using the shadow clone jutsu.

Problem with the main story mode is most of these fights are done with bandits who don’t even have a chakra bar so forget jutsu they can’t even use replacement jutsu (pressing B button to block an attack at the right time will transport behind the opponent) so it’s pretty much beat them up a bit to were there down and charge the shadow clone jutsu to beat the crap out of them. Luckily the bosses which are major characters from the show put up some memorable fights but the bandits are so easily whoop it becomes like beating up a bunch of babies when they start to appear.

The story mode takes about 8 hours to complete not goofing off and exploring the village of course. Outside of the story mode you have a tournament mode which is more like a regular fighter were you get to choose from a series of fighter and pit them against the others. The fighting system is the same and the jutsu are just has easy to perform with each fighter, and each fighter ultimate attack has a different way to attack and defend aganst them. The only move I was not able to do in the game is Neji’s 64 palm rotation the rest of them are pretty simple to do.

The online combatants is a ranked mode that puts you against random opponents on xbox live. The game has little lag and the idea is to win has many games has you can and get to the top of the tower of death without loosing a fight. It has a few extra unlockable stages and characters you can purchase but seeing how I don’t like to pay 12 bucks for 4 extra characters I passed on it. The Japanese audio with subtitle mode though is free to download on xbox live.

Final Recommendation.
The hyper active knuckle head ninja almost scores a perfect if it wasen’t for the repetive fights against the Bandits which gets old by the end of the game it would be perfect. The leaf village is just fun to explore and run through. The fighting game engine is also pretty top notch and it has a good online mode and now that there is a drop in price it may be worth a pick up for any fan of Naruto.