My New Addiction

Lately I have been pretty bored when I'm at home. After deciding to take a break from Everquest 2, I somewhat found my daily lifestyle rather empty, apart from listening to my mum talking to Shana my brother's Syrian (she plays the peek-a-boo game with Shana) or watching replays of "Friends" on DvD.

I had happened to come across one of my brother's Playstation 3 game "Naruto Ultimate Ninja STORM" and it caught my eye. I have been an avid fan ever of both the anime and manga series, so to be given the pleasure to submerge myself in the gaming franchise of the series basically set me high on fire.

I totally adore how the graphics of the game is in tune to it's anime counterpart. While playing as Naruto, I feel as though I'm living the game with the Leaf Village layout, intrinsically brought to life as it brought back the old memories and feelings I had when I was watching the anime.

As the story goes, there are multiple missions for you to embark, some of which are relevant to the actual storyline. Check out my Playtime, 15hours in one night! I'm aiming for 20hours to complete an S-Rank mission scroll.

Within 15hours, I have completed 41% of the missions given to me. I wonder if that's a lot, because when I asked my brother how long it took him otherwise, he said 20 hours of game play, which means I still have 5 hours to grind away for the other 59%! That's really a strain!

There's a VS. system too, where you can fight against an A.I or get a friend to battle with you. The storyline of the game follows up till the part where you have to chase down Sasuke Uchiha, so the characters you get to choose are limited within that arc.

After confirming your main character, you can choose up to two different support characters to aid you in battle. One of my favorite support characters would be Anko, I just wish she had more screen time in the anime.

 

Once you're done with your selection, you can customize which ninjutsu and ultimate jutsu  to use in combat. for certain jutsu you would have to complete missions to unlock it or purchase it with the money you have earned in-game.

 The Jutsu that you perform while in combat is faithfully similar to what you see in the anime, you get to throw shurikens, papers bombs and do summoning jutsu (Kakashi gets to summon his Nin-dogs).

That aside, there is also a collection mode (something like a side quest) for you to complete, you need to purchase certain figurines and jutsu movies plus the music to complete a diorama set. This will enable you to access famous cutscenes from the anime.

Right now, I am wondering if I should organize a Naruto Ultimate Ninja battle smackdown at my place. It should be helluva thrill to gather the Naruto fans together and kickstart this party!

Game Genre : Beat em' up

Rating : 3.5/5 In my opinion, it has good game replay value and it something that you can bring out and play when you have friends coming over.

Look out for the part 2 of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 coming out soon, you can watch the trailer here.