DUBAI: You shouldn’t always give the fans what they want.
Nowhere is this more evident than the latest instalment of Ultimate Ninja Storm, the 3D fighting game based on the long-running Naruto Shippuden anime cartoon series (in turn based on the even-longer-running Naruto manga).
It’s an excellent fighting game with a huge roster of characters, tag-team and team options, and the ability to play against opponents online and at home on a second controller.
Every character has ranged and melee attacks, blocks, dodges and a variety of extremely cool special moves and combos, which are the key to victory since regular attacks do so little damage that their main purpose is to interrupt an opponent’s combos.
Special attacks deplete a meter that’s powered by resting and charging up, or by collecting energy released when you or your opponent take a heavy hit.
At any time you can switch between the three characters on your team to access their special abilities, though they come into the fight with the same level of damage as the character they’re replacing. You can also call in one of your team members to help you block or attack for a moment.
Some special moves allow you to summon both your teammates to perform a super-powerful group attack.
The relative simplicity of combo commands mean the game avoids becoming a button-masher.
The result is a surprisingly complex tactical game in which you have to balance attack, defence and recovery, using timing to chain your combos and special moves to keep your opponent off balance and interrupt their moves and recoveries.
The graphics — replicating the cartoon style of the anime — are cool and stylish.
The fighters come from the whole gamut of Naruto canon — the manga, the anime and the spin-offs, which is the good part of pleasing fans.
Where Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 falls flat is in the story mode. Each chapter — which clings to the plot of the series — is preceded by a lengthy cutscene, and followed by an equally lengthy postscript cutscene. And these cutscenes, often running longer than the battle they frame, are dull, dull, dull — short on action, long on exposition and with all the pacing skills of an Amazonian sloth.
The result is an exercise in frustration, when you find yourself desperately wishing the cutscene would end so you can get to the action.
This heavy-handed use of cutscenes is apparently because fans complained to publishers Bandai Namco there wasn’t enough story in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, and they were moving from fight to fight with no context.
I’ve no objection to moderate use of cutscenes, but the fact is the game’s story mode is about one-third gaming and two-thirds boring exposition and turgid dialogue. That isn’t moderate. I abandoned it completely after half a dozen missions and went back to multiplayer.
And the multiplayer really does rock. Were I to rate the game on that alone, I’d put it at 9/10, but the horrendous solo experience drags it down.
Rating: 7.5/10
