Naruto: Rise of a Ninja was a Xbox 360 exclusive that literally came out of nowhere. Being developed by Ubisoft, and as a American exclusive, nobody really knew if this game would be good or not. Like many people, we all pretty much forgot about it after its annoucement and went on. We’ve already seen some good Naruto games, but nothing we’ve been able to call an awesome Naruto game. Usually, when a shonen anime gets popular it gets several fighting games made, and its only once in a blue moon when a game decides too mix Fighting and Adventure together to make one complete game. Well, wouldn’t you know Ubisoft took the rise and attempted to make probably the best anime game i’ve ever played. This game does what I had always hoped that other anime games would do.

-FOLLOWS the storyline as accurately as possible.
-Uses the music from the show
-Uses cutscenes from the show
-Relive the anime as Naruto, and not relive some random parts of the anime
-Play the game without watching the anime, and actually know what the hell is going on… sort of. =)

^^^ YOU SEE THAT?! Thats freakin’ groundbreaking. Imagine if a movie game did that… you know, was ACTUALLY like the movie. People would shit themselves. Well Naruto did that. It surprised me alot. Of course, while the game is a blast play, let me stop praising it so much for just a second. When you start the game, you start right at the beginning. You’re a hated orphan and cause trouble to get attention. After failing the Genin exam again, Mizuki tells you Iruka will let you become a Genin only if you steal a scroll for him and so on. This begins the game, and you know THATS how the anime began too! WOW!!

So the first negative pops up in the beginning, if you don’t know, I really don’t give a damn about the 16:9, HD, next generation crap. I game on a 25 inch mono 4:3 Zenith tube TV. Seeing the clips of the anime in a weird looking widescreen format on a fullscreen TV wasn’t so cool, the anime orignally aired in 4:3, and STILL IS only in 4:3. The game adds some boarders even when you play the game in 4:3… why I ask? We’ll never know. Another problem is that the clips are from the edited version of the anime. Not like the edited version is bad, just it would of been better if the fans were treated to the uncut clips instead.

The most obvious thing is that some of the voice actors in the game are not the actual dub voice actors. It seems most of the important characters have their actors, but I swear to god it seems like there either switching in and out (I’m looking at you dub Iruka) or that they have different actors. Thankfully, its not that noticable such most of the side characters barely have any major part in the game, so it doesn’t affect it much.

There is also an option to download the Japanese voices w/ English subtitles in the game so you can play the game like your watching the sub, so pirates (like me) will feel right at home! Though, I chose to stick with the dub while playing. The story throughout the game is told throughout cutscenes using cels that look like were taken from the show (literally) and voice acted.

A big negative is that the actual characters on screen have no lip movement, and have no emotion at all except for Naruto who is the only 3D character in the game to change expressions. Doing this, made going through some the story kind of well… uh… lame but using the anime itself through certain scenes (Iruka taking a hit for Naruto, Naruto & Sasuke vs Zabuza, Zabuza’s demise, etc.) are all well placed and come in at the perfect time. If the anime cutscenes were not in the game, it would be as lame as the story in Clash of Ninja 2 which was in my opinion was garbage.

-When you jump or got onto certain objects Naruto sometimes hops forever until he finally falls off the object, though this happens very rarely.

-The worst bug of them all is the bug where the game freezes in certain areas when you jump over or get hit by a trap. According to some idiot on GameFAQ’s, he said its cause by downloading Shikamaru but I refuse to delete him because Shikamaru is probably one of the most badass characters in the anime, enough said. (Though sadly, he is making my gameplay experience… troublesome.)

-Almost every side mission requires you to:

A) Collect money that you are forced to hop around bulidings and break trash cans to find.
B) Kick 3-6 Bandits asses which usually go in the order of Bandit, Bandit Lieutenant, and Bandit Boss (the orignaity of this amazes me.)
C) Race in some very easy races where you just run/jump in circles, and you aren’t racing anybody at all.

-The bandits look like shitty poorly drawn characters that a child drew up. The filler characters in the Naruto filler episodes even looked better than this, and thats pretty amazing.

So right now, i’m about to start the chunnin exams, the game decided to freeze in The Forest of Death nbecause there are traps all over the place. By the time I leave there it shall be known as The Forest of Freeze, because there are traps literally ALL OVER THE PLACE. May god help my…game.

After I complete the game, a full review will be up. Stay tuned. – SanjiX