don’t tell me the ending to: Naruto – Rise of a Ninja

I’m going to be naturally a little bitter about this game.  It crashes on me nearly every time I hit a log.  I’m not sure why, but it is all the more frustrating to have to do every trap filled platforming sequence perfectly, or be forced to reboot the system.

But, I’ll try to explain the game based on merit as if it worked perfectly.

I just finished what would be considered season 1 of the TV show, and as Detnap noted earlier, the story will make absolutely no sense to anyone who has not seen the show.  In fact, even having watched a large chunk of the show, many scenes were barely coherent. Worse than normal. Like words missing. Idea present. But flow gone. abbrv.

Don’t bother if you are not already a fan of the show, or just want to play based solely on the gameplay.

The graphics are a great example of cell shading.  They may only be out done by the upcoming Naruto game on the ps3.  Apparently, after all these years, Naruto games are the games that are going to cross the boundry between animation and cell shading.  It’s not quite there yet, but they (different companies) are approaching the Naruto style quickly.

Gameplay is actually pretty complicated.  It feels overwhelming; there are a lot of options in a large over-world map.  It is very similar to Spiderman 2.  You have extra mobility (that you gain after a couple of hours) to jump around the city, collect things, level up money, and buy new abilities that grant you more strength in combat, and mobility out of combat.  The big difference is this city is much more realized than the Xbox 1’s Spiderman 2 (which was moreso than Spiderman 3’s….but that’s another story).  The buildings are varied and bright.  You can still get turned around due to the scope, but there is a handy map that’ll tell you exactly where to run if you ever get too lost jumping around looking for coins.  I’m just reaching the point of extra mobility (extra fast sprint + quick turning slide), so I’ll have more impressions on this as I learn how to use these new abilities.

The combat itself is a very simple (and not particularly good) street fighter.  It’s not horrid, but the ps2 and gamecube series, which focus on simple fighting mechanics, do them much better.

Still, I’ll mention: the game is crashing on me continuously.  This is going to be a hard one to finish, simply due to this annoyance that brings the game to a sheer halt.  It does not autosave nearly often enough to accomidate for it.  This seems to be an issue specific to my disc/xbox combo, because I have friends who never had a problem.  I wonder if I just have a bad disc?  No other game has ever given me trouble.  But it’s just too specific to trap damage (swinging logs and the like) to be a simple scratch.  I’ve cleared the cache; no avail.

Oh well.

Stay tuned.  I hope to finish this one up quick and move through my half-finished games queue before the holiday rush hits.