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The controls, they aren't bad, balanced and playable, if am honest. There are one or two buttons, which I mixed up from time to time, but I guess that was my fault.
The same can't be said about the enemy AI though,
for a slasher / beat em up type of game I expected the opponents to have a bit more oomph, more bite. But in actual fact it seemed boring. But it has to be said I have been against worse AI. A lot worse.
Maybe as boring are the missions, which are repetitive, I know most slashers are repetitive, that even goes for Devil May Cry, but I would so rather play Devil May Cry. I had a lot more fun playing that game. It was just the theatre of it all; Devil May Cry had so much drama and soul. This however just seems dull.
That's not the worst part and certainly not the last of things. Voice acting, for example, irritating to say the least. I would find it less irritating and more relaxing listening to 100 speeches by Mrs. Thatcher, on surround sound.
Then there's' the plot. What in the name of all that's holy were they thinking, its alright up until the point when actors start talking, which is all the time. Thus making what should be good, great maybe, into absolutely diabolical.
I should talk about the graphics at this point. The designers have gone for japanesey style graphics, similar can be found in the Dragon ball Z Budokai games to give it an anime look. Nice idea just it's not done as well as I'd have hoped. Yeah I'm going to use the word dull again.
The worst part is that this game doesn't know what it wants to be.
Missions are slasher/ beat em up/ action adventure sort of things, fine but then the missions are coupled together by waves of RPG elements and annoying ?choose your destination? parts that really interrupt the flow.
And this game is a sequel! I shan't even attempt to ask what the first one was like.
That would have been my verdict if I had ignored the fan base. Naruto does have a fan base, and I suspect that fans will quite like it, because they will find the one thing that I could not. The one thing, which for me lets this game down; its soul.
It's a game's character and charisma that brings me back to a game. Halo2 was a pathetically made game, it wasn't even finished, but it had so much character and charisma, and that's why so many people played it.
The Spiderwick Chronicles is another example. That was made to a budget and in a rush, but it has more character than Naruto.
I struggled to keep playing this game; nothing really interested me about it nor completely won me over. It was either ok, or just diabolical.
But I'm sure fans of Naruto will find it? somehow.
Every time I played this game I kept thinking, ?I could be playing something else?. Every time I went to play it I didn't smile, I didn't look forward to it. Which is a shame. Because I wanted to like it.
8/10
