Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (Xbox 360)
The bar for anime-licensed games nudges ever-so-slightly upward.
1/30/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2
What's Hot: Looks great; Fighting system is simple and satisfying
What's Not: Tasks are repetitive and most of the environments are boring
Miguel Lopez
Status: Have you figured out the status secret yet?
Through the course of the game, you'll do battle with what I'm assuming is virtually all of the pertinent characters from the first season of the cartoon. More often than not, though, you'll be fighting generic bandits and ninjas that populate the game's ludicrously barren exterior environments. These guys are essentially the green slimes and giant rats of
Rise of the Ninja; they pop up more than you'd like them to, and you get the distinct the feeling that the only reason they're there is to prolong the most pedestrian moments of your journey.
As for the fighting itself, it isn't bad. Pulling off gratifying attack combinations is pretty easy, and since you can unlock new combos by means of a rudimentary RPG-style experience system, there's actually some incentive to complete the tedious side-quests you'll be offered. The marquee battles in the game are actually pretty challenging, but most of the time, it's only because the notable boss characters are incredibly overpowered -- you'll burn through a few of
Rise of a Ninja's equivalent of lives to complete the toughest ones.
It would be easy to dismiss
Rise of a Ninja's shortcomings by writing the game off as "kids' stuff," but that would be to ignore the fact that younger gamers probably enjoy the same kinds of games that we do -- and unless you're talking really young, they probably aren't any less discerning than we are. Be that as it may, a great many youngsters (as well many who are young at heart) are way into Naruto. I don't doubt that these people will get a lot more out of
Rise of a Ninja than I did.
This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
