Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

In anticipation of the release of this game, I recently went back to finish 2008′s Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, which was an incredibly flawed to the point of tedium, primarily a fighting game, mashed with a sandbox type hub world, with far too many collectiables, and unlockables. The fighting was fun but beyond that, the non-fighting quests activities were terrible. Assuming that the team would keep an eye on the feedback, and from all of the epic battles that occurred in the Shippuden series, UNS2 had all kinds of potential to be an excellent game, and not just for fans of the franchise.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 picks up roughly 3 years after the events of the first in the series (this is inline with the break in episodes in the anime as well). Starting with reformed Team 7′s search for former comrade Sasuke, who abandoned the village at the end of the first on a mission of vengeance. Sadly, I don’t think this was really communicated well to people who didn’t play the original. That is pretty much the case throughout the game in that it really isn’t fleshed out like it is in the anime and manga, which as a fan is ok because knowing that story it’s easy to piece it together because they do follow the story closely with the exception of some minor details that I’m sure were changed for game purposes. One problem though with the story telling in the game is that the objective of your mission is primarily going to be ‘win a match’, which on it’s own isn’t a problem  but sometimes you are controlling the losing side of the battle, and your objective is to win. When you win under these circumstances it isn’t explained. Again, if you’re familiar with the series this isn’t a big deal but in my opinion it makes it hard for me to recommend this game to non-fans. Therefore, if you are interested in this story at all, I’d say go ahead and watch the anime or read the manga instead.

The core of this game is the fighting, which makes up the “Free play”, “online battle”, and most of the story mode. On the surface it sounds rudimentary, you have 1 melee attack that you can spam for combos, insert some thumb stick directions to vary the attacks, and more importantly the timing of said attacks (more on that in a minute)  and a ranged attack, and a jutsu button.

Support Attack

The key to the battle is managing your chakra, for those not familiar with the term this basically amounts to energy used to perform special moves, things like jutsu (read special moves), special ranged attacks, and chakra dashes (an easy way to close the gap or create some distance from your opponent) all take various amounts of chakra. You also have the ability to spend some chakra on a ‘substitution’ with a well timed block, meaning hitting block exactly when your opponent makes contact. This is where the strategy of the varied combos come in to play; in a lot of cases your ability to pull off these substitutions determines the outcome of the battle. Chakra can be regenerated but you can not block or move while doing so leaving you very vulnerable. To compensate for that, you often (depending on where you are in the story) have support characters you can call in that may help buy you some time. You also have items bound to the d-pad that will do things like clutter the environment with explosives that can buy you some time as well, but you can do things like increase your speed or attack power, or restore some chakra. Going further, if you use your support characters enough during the course of the battle you will enable “support drive” with means for a limited time your team members can jump in and out automatically, also, sometimes you can power up your chakra beyond the end of the meter to enable “awakening” which effectively changes everything about your character, they’ve got different jutsu’s they’re faster and stronger. The penalty to this is that when it expires, you become weakened and take more damage. Now all that said, it’s not impossible to get through the story mode without using a lot of that stuff, but as I’ll get into in a few, you are doing yourself a disservice if you do because it is honestly a treat to watch, the animation and camera work really create some cinematic experiences.

On top of all that subtlety, there is a very nice collection of characters to use, 42 of them actually once you’ve actually unlocked them all, which after my 30hrs in the game to this point I’ve yet to do entirely (3 left, Minato, Killer Bee and Lars from Tekken). That aside, these characters fall into different categories, there are those who like to get in close and punch it out, while other like to stay at range, and even odder, those who use puppets, yes puppets… these characters are particularly strange to use since you can move the puppets indepentantly of the character itself, which has proven to be pretty challenging for me to get a hang of. The difference is very obvious when you’re playing

Now I’m not trying to say that this is a fighting game that can share a stage with Street Fighter or any other fighter with a strong competitive following, it obviously doesn’t have that same sense of mastery and balance, but what this is, is a very fun, very accessible fighting game, that looks like it was ripped straight from the anime. Each match plays out with animation and style that I could not describe as anything less than complete fidelity. Fans will recognize the combos and jutsus and with all the little things like churning chakra and exploding tags and kunai scattered across the battle field. Unfortunately the battle field is always a very empty area, it would have been neat had they included things in the environment that could be used to hide behind or as protection, it really could have added some neat mechanics like using Neji or Hinata’s bakugan (special eyes that can find chakra) to hunt down the opponent in these scenarios, but I digress.

As great as I think the fighting in this game is, it is the story mode itself that falls completely flat on it’s face. Without going to much into the old game, they removed everything I thought was neat about the hub world from UNS (namingly direct action to the missions from the menu, and the ability to explore konaha as a sandbox). Replacing those features with, very linear classic JRPG-esque rooms with quest giving NPCs. Once you get a quest you generally have to go on some very long walk through areas you’ve already been for the most part, initiate a battle, win, then walk all the way back. If that weren’t tedious enough, along the way there are countless of respawning loot items that you need to stop and collect which are used to fulfill “order deliveries” at the Konaha shops which will unlock items that you can then purchase and use in battle. There are also collection quests and some hide and seek quests, but not nearly as bad as some of the variety quests from the original. There is however a payoff for sticking with it at the end of each chapter you encounter an epic multi-phased boss fight that is taken straight from the series. Sometimes they introduce some new mechanic that is only used for that section of the encounter, or some series of quick time events that results in some really fun to watch animations.  These fights are easily the highlight of the game, and it is a shame that it is surrounded by so many poor design decisions. On the plus side, you do get to play through the story as a variety of characters which really does help mix it up. There are also points where you can select who fights based on who is currently in your team, which can also be selected (this is how you play through the end game after the final confrontation).

Sasori Boss Fight: oh yes, you're in control here

Ultimately I’d have a hard time recommending this to anyone short of the hardest of fans. Those who have the ‘stick-to-it-ness’ to play through the story will rewarded with a handful of epic boss battles, and a nice full roster (I wasn’t even able to find a cheat code, not that I condone that sort of behavior) to play a very pretty, fast paced, fun, and accessible fighter. As a fan, I had a fair amount of fun with this, though I’m not convinced the reward is worth the effort.

DJ Hero 2

I enjoyed the first DJ Hero game, but not enough to really consider buying the sequel. My main complaint was that I struggled to relate to my role in the experience, and there were some questionable decisions on the track list. The idea of including the freestyle scratches, and crossfade sections really brought me back around when I tried the demo for DJ Hero 2.

The freestyle scratches and especially the crossfades definitely helped to connect me to the experience, in a way that I felt was missing from DJ Hero, they’re fun, and they really give you an opportunity in small doses to make the mix your own, and gives a chance to relate the actions you’re taking to what is happening in the music. It is definitely rewarding when you throw something together that sounds pretty good.

My other complaint from the first being the soundtrack, is also resolved here, or at least it seems like it is (so far). There are definitely songs on there that I don’t like, Lady Gaga for instance, but, it makes perfect sense in this context and it’s definitely playable (especially when paired with DeadMau5 who I do like quite a bit). And for the most part (at least what I’ve heard so far), the mixes are really really good, and don’t feel like they were made for the game at all. Kudos here…

I’m not a fan of the DJ Battles in ‘Empire Mode’ (the game’s story mode effectively), to me they’re not all that fun, and on top of that they cut the screen in half to show the other DJ even if it’s the CPU, I guess I get why they put it in there just to add some variety, and some interaction with the celebrities they acquired for the game.

This is easily the best DJ Hero game yet, there are a couple DLC packs coming but they might have a real winner here if they support it the way harmonix is supporting Rock Band, but I find that pretty unlikely. I think the changes are significant enough that you owe it to yourself to at least find a way to give it a try if you didn’t like the first one, it’s honestly a good time.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

I’ve brought up in the past that I’m a fan of the Naruto anime and manga, and I even enjoyed many of the other video games in the series. After playing the demo for Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 I was actually really excited to pick it up, it seemed like they made some subtle changes to the combat that would really change the way it’s played in the context of story fights anyway, not really free play or online, mostly because of the fight in the demo involved a lot of moving to avoid jutsu and that was really fun.

All that said, my biggest concern for the game was going to be how they handled the story mode, lets be honest here, no one on my friends list is going to be picking this game up and I don’t blame them. So to me, the big draw is the story mode. As I mentioned it is a story I’m intimately familiar with and quite frankly very invested in, the series is at episode 400 or so between the original series and shippuden and the manga is beyond chapter 500. And here is one of my biggest problems with the game so far, it doesn’t do a good job in telling that story to players who may not be familiar with the content. I’ve played through the end of chapter 1, which is the end of the Save the Kazekage story arc, and it did include all the key points and moments but there is a lot of subtlety that I found important that were left out. Admittedly catching a player up on 200+ episodes is not really an option, and they do try to do back-story pieces during the battles by way of a reward for doing well in the quick time events in certain story moments. I did notice a few issues with some of these flashbacks though, one example is when they show a moment between Sasuke and Itachi after Itachi killed their entire family. Itachi was wearing his Akatsuki robes, he wasn’t when that happened in the story that wasn’t the case. I can certainly understand why that would be an appropriate thing to do to help relate the characters to people not familiar with the story because Itachi ~is~ wearing the robes for the duration of the story told in UNS2. So while I can understand why they would do it, it would appear that they are trying to cater to both side, and you know what, I’m fine with that, but I think by making some of the important back stories a reward you are potentially taking that content away from a player who may not know it and to me, that’s a mistake. There is a TON of content here though, I think I’m almost 5 hours in, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the story if the game truly goes out to the end of the Pain Saga, a lot to see.

Now, on top of the story telling itself, and I’d imagine in response to the outcry about how terrible the hub world aspect of the original Ultimate Ninja Storm game, here’s what they did… they changed the sandbox style Konaha with a JRPG LINEAR, SMALL ROOM, Final Fantasy XII style, you know what everyone’s complaint about FFXIII was? yea, exactly… Here’s a note to cyberconnect2, the problem with Ultimate Ninja Storm wasn’t the sandbox mode itself in fact running around Konaha was actually fairly fun, it was all the stupid shit that you had to do in the sandbox mode, the millions of collectibles, the order lists where you had to find combinations of items to unlock certain things. Guess what, most of that stupid shit is still here. So, while it did give them an opportunity to expand the environment beyond the Konaha walls, which I think is important, you get to see the sand village and the route to the sand village etc, but it’s not fun traversal at all. Your team walks slowly, they don’t use the ninja tree travel at all “we’re in a hurry!”, then proceed to walk slowly doesn’t make much sense.

In any case, the combat is mostly the same, I haven’t run into too much of fancy jutsu stuff that I was looking forward too from the demo since, but it’s still pretty early so I’m not going to make a judgement on that yet. Still a lot of fast paced good looking action though with some quick time events mixed in at the end. It’s still really fun to play when you’re actually in combat, I just wish they had some sense when it came to the story mode. I’ll likely finish this one, and I’d probably still recommend it to fans, it’s really an opportunity to revisit the story without watching all the episodes again, especially since the fan can likely fill in the blanks on their own.