Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4
Score: 80% ESRB: Teen Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: Cyber Connect2 Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Fighting
Graphics & Sound: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4 is the first Naruto game to touch on the Shippuden story and characters, but does the game do the license justice? Visually, the game keeps in line with the past PS2 Ultimate Ninja titles, which means both the in-fight graphics and open-world visuals are pretty good. Besides the various characters sporting their new older look, you can also import the younger versions of the characters simply by having a save of the previous games on your memory card. This means that you could have dozens of characters available for Free Battle mode right off the bat, and they look pretty good. Granted, this isn't the PS3's Ultimate Ninja Storm, but it still looks good. Sound is also on par with the previous games. The voicework is performed by the same actors from the Anime series, and like the rest of the games in this series, are top notch.
Gameplay: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4 has several gameplay modes. The two that you will be spending most of your time in are Hero Mode and Master Mode, but the others are the standard Free Battle, Practice and Shop modes. But like I said, the main modes are Hero and Master. Hero mode goes through the events of the first series in the form of memory clips. Most of these clips are cut-scenes breezing over the events from the show, but there are a good five or six battles in each of the story arcs - at least, there are the major fights like those against Zabuza, Garra or Orochimaru. As you would expect, these fights are the standard 2D Ultimate Ninja, multi-plane-style. What's odd is that the game's bigger Master Mode takes a completely different approach at fights. Master Mode is a semi-open-world environment where Naruto runs around progressing the Shippuden story. Actually, the game starts off with an original story that takes place not long before Naruto returns to the village. In this story, Naruto has to help save a small village that is constantly hounded by a demon. After that story wraps up, Naruto returns home and the events of the first 20 or so episodes take place as Naruto and Sakura once again join Kakashi's team as they re-start their hunt for Sasuke and end up taking on a couple of Akatsuki members. What I found odd about this mode is the fact that Fights mode aren't the standard Ultimate Ninja-fare. Instead, they feel much more like an action-platformer form of fighting. Button-mashing causes Naruto to unleash a torrent of random attacks in a 3D environment and very little thought or strategy is needed here.
Difficulty: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4 has mixed results when it comes to difficulty. During Hero Mode, or the other normal fighting modes, the A.I. is decent but far from unbeatable. At least there are quite a few challenging fights in Hero Mode's story, and those that are difficult are the ones that viewers of the show would expect to be hard. But these fights are offset by Master Mode's super easy play through. Like I mentioned before, instead of having standard fighting sequences (like even the previous Ultimate Ninja's Open-World mode had), instead you get locked into an area and have to fight off a swarm of bad guys before you can move on. The reason these fights are as easy as they are is because all you have to do is tap the (Circle) button and Naruto's auto-aimed attacks will deal damage and he will rarely get hit. Even in the bigger boss battles, the fights were way too easy and didn't require any kind of thought. The most you have to worry about is occasionally hitting (Triangle) to perform other special attacks, but those simply aren't necessary.
Game Mechanics: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4's core is the same as the last game. The fighting model and style haven't changed all that much, which is good, because the system the Ultimate Ninja line has works well, especially for the license. The main change in mechanics comes in Master Mode, but I've harped on those changes a bit already and don't really have anything extra to say. Suffice it to say that this mode is fun, but since it is the main story mode, the fact that you don't enter into normal fights, and Hero Mode only glazes over the original story arc, means there are far fewer fights in this game than in previous ones. Of course, you can always go into the other modes for the more traditional fights, but it just doesn't feel the same. Put simply, if you've liked the series so far, then you won't really have anything to complain about with Ultimate Ninja 4. You have new characters (plus all your old favorites), new moves and new locations to fight in. When it comes to anime-based fighting games, what more could you ask for?
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
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