From what has been shown so far, it is evident that Naruto: Rise of Ninja will be a game for the fans. While the Japanese games progressively cover the series a season or so at a time, Ubisoft’s effort is looking to cover a whopping 80 episodes, from the very beginning to just after the Chuunin exams. Quite a lot happens during this time, so we’re expecting a comprehensive and reasonably sized adventure. Obviously, you’ll be taking control of the titular character, Naruto. However, every character that has appeared throughout the series up to that point will be making an appearance as well.
Looks incredible doesn't it?
Naruto looks to slap together numerous kinds of gameplay together. In something of an RPG aspect, the whole of Naruto’s hometown, Konoha, has been recreated and acts as a hub throughout the game. Aesthetically, the village looks very reminiscent of the series so far and the developers have gone to great lengths to recreate all of the town’s monuments. The village itself will be open for exploration and ripe with missions for the taking.
There are several missions that can be taken at a time, however, the developers have allowed for one mission to become your focus. This is so that when asking the villagers for directions or clues, their responses will relate to that mission. Initially, your missions will be simple, find ten generic items or find Konohamaru (as was demonstrated to us). Since Naruto is considered a bit deviant, some villagers will give friendly responses and others will not. These are colourfully represented by emotion symbols above the villagers' heads.
The reason for completing these missions is to build up your respect, which is represented by a chakra bar. In the current build of the game, respect builds chakra, which in turn allows you to undertake more training. Training increases your health bar and allows you to learn more abilities – as any good ninja should. However, neither of these systems is guaranteed to be in the final game. So, once enough respect/chakra was gathered, it was off to find your sensei, Kakashi, for some training.
The free roaming world sounds good.
The training in this case, relates to early on in the Naruto series, where the three students were trying to run up a tree in order to take down the kunai. The first aspect required the player to use hand signals to focus their energy. This was done by holding the left trigger and inputting a sequence using the analog sticks. We’re informed that there will be several different sequences/hand signals learned throughout the game. Secondly, players took part in a mini-game to run up the tree, where the player had to keep in between the lines in order to stay on the tree. After learning several of these kinds of abilities, Naruto will be a little like the Prince of Persia.
After this, the demo moved onto a fight sequence, but not before one of the many sequences where Naruto is flying through the trees at break neck speeds. These sequences were quite fun and quite fast. When we got onto the fight sequence, we were informed that the majority of the game would be spent in battle. While the main storyline will revolve around the primary battles that were fought, there will be an online multiplayer where players will be able to play as and against several different characters.
The fighting system itself was hardly ever going to compete with something like Virtua Fighter but it looks to be a bit more sophisticated than early Dragon Ball Z Budokai games. The X and Y buttons were dedicated for horizontal and vertical attacks respectively and these can be used to string together combos. The B button will be used for blocks, as well as substituting at the right times. Every character has special moves, but Naruto: Rise of Ninja doesn’t settle for simple yet fancy sequences.
Prepare to step into the shoes of Naruto.
To initiate a special move, each character will need to input a specific hand signal sequence. Following this, some bars appear above where the player will need to get the indicator in between them and then the sequence will start. The initiating player attacks and tries to maximise damage while the defending player tries to minimise damage. For example, Neji’s special move firstly involves him trying to hit chakra points while the defending player tries to avoid this. The system has interesting implications with respect to the norm and we look forward to seeing it in the final game.
Visually, the game is one of few to employ cel-shading in this HD generation, but it manages to come off very nicely so far. The game is highly authentic, technically good and artistically great. Not to mention, over-the-top and fitting in well with the series. No word so far on whether the game will have just English or both English and Japanese voices. While the game itself is shaping up nicely, there was a constant lingering that the final game will eventually be geared a little to close to a younger audience. This would be a shame, especially with the endearing themes that the show contains and the sophisticated styles of gameplay that were on show.
Naruto: Rise of Ninja looks like it has been given freedom by Ubisoft to grow and flourish into a good solid game, rather than just being rushed out in order to take advantage of the license. While it still looks like the game will cater a little too much for a younger audience, the fact is that it looks like it will still be a good game that represents the series astutely. Naruto looks like it will actually be a good licensed game, believe it!
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