Naruto: Ultimate Ninja PlayStation 2

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja PlayStation 2

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Oct 20, 2006 | 5 out of 5 found this Naruto: Ultimate Ninja review helpful

Pros: Unique manga-inspired visual style; gameplay is easy to pick up; over-the-top special attacks are a blast to watch; ai opponents put up a good challenge.

Cons: Gameplay modes are a little too pedestrian; special attacks appear a little too often.

Naruto and the lion's share of both his friends and foes are practitioners of a fantasy version of ninjitsu that affords them incredible agility, speed, and strength, allowing them to jump high up into the air, teleport short distances, run strai...ght up sheer vertical surfaces and on the surface of water, and perform some genuinely crushing attacks. There's also a mystical side to their abilities, in that they can use special ninja scrolls to summon awesome elemental powers and supernatural allies. There's rarely any shortage of fighters trying to outdo each other with their spectacular abilities, and this comes across palpably in Ultimate Ninja's gameplay. The action in Ultimate Ninja is fast, and also perhaps a bit mashy, but it's got a great deal of style and doesn't take too long to get the hang of. The X button jumps, and tapping it twice will produce a double-jump. Though the visuals are largely polygonal, the action is similar to a 2D fighter, except that each stage has multiple planes, which you can instantly teleport to by holding up or down, depending on your current position, when hitting the X button. There's a little tactical advantage to this, since power-ups and friendly characters looking to aid the fight will randomly appear across the stage, and it can be a good way to quickly evade an attack; but mostly it just allows for bigger levels and more craziness. The square button can be used to throw your standard shuriken as well as any special power-ups you might've picked up, which can range from a gigantic shuriken to assistance from another character, but you'll mostly be using the circle button to launch attacks. Each character has a dozen or so different attacks, though you can expect to see a lot of shared moves between most of the characters, which basically means that they all play very similarly and once you've mastered one, you've basically mastered them all. Read more Less