Title: Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3Developed by: CyberConnect2 & Namco Bandai gamesReleased: 2013 on Xbox 360, PlayStation3 & Windows.
Naruto Shippity-doo-dah Ultimate Path of Neo Storm 3 is an anime-faithful martial arts game featuring beyond-human powers. The game offers complicated power-attacks from button combinations within custom made tournaments, online or split screen.
On first thought,
yet again, I felt the controller cringe as it expected me to bash every button
in desperation – it was right. Our fear aside, I was surprised how many
characters there were and that didn't count the variations of each or the
variations of the variations, in case someone else had picked the same
variation – that makes sense, right? This is nice as I would hate to be unable
to use an extra costume I had paid for just because some other micro-transaction-phallic
did too. On match start, I was bombarded by bars, bars changing colours on
depletion and blocked-out expanding bars.
All I could think was how right my Dad was: “Manuals are for the idiots who don’t read them”, as I prepared myself for a knight Rider Cameo.
The graphics
are true to the form of anime: A nice cel-shaded visual style with vibrant,
non-vulgar, colours. The images are crisp with very little in the terms of
clutter. I’ve always liked wisps of air shown in games and this game doesn’t
abuse them. The arena is contrasted nicely to the characters for clarity so
players can see what’s happening.
The loading screens featured layered 2D cut outs which were certainly interesting and reminded me of Captain Pugwash.
The sound is
always a sore spot with me in these types of games but Naruto has enough
variance and space between noises that your ears don’t become spammed with
screams of battle-pleasure. The music reminds me of Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon – very harmonic and doesn’t intrude.
As I am not
very good at these kinds of games, I thought I would watch a few videos on
youtube, some online tournaments. The tournaments are a great mechanic to
expand the game play and there are people who upload videos of these
tournaments; these people are very competitive. Something I did notice during
battles was the strange camera angle. It’s confusing enough that I must press
the opposite direction for an attack in other games but with Naruto’s angle,
which avoids the standard side-on, I don’t even know which way I would start
running after moving the analogue stick.
As a game
faithful to its origins with such replay value, there are many reason to add
this game to your collection. If I had a little more time I’d perhaps start
learning the moves, like turning into a log and teleporting – like I did with
the Mole-man in Bloody Raw.
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