As our orange clad ninja would say, “Believe it!” Naruto Clash of Ninja Revolution seems to be a button masher on the surface, but spend some real serious time with it and the game turns out not only to be a pretty fun fighter, but a game that offers quite a bit of extras to spice up the experience.
If there’s one nice thing about the Naruto games, it’s that the developers seem fearless in trying out new methods and strategies in order to make the game play different. We’ve seen Naruto enter the 3D world, the enhanced storyline phase and, of course, the traditional pure fighter mode. With NCoNR, the game has gone back to basics and emphasizes the pure fighting aspects of a more traditional Naruto game with some good enhancements surrounding gameplay.
The game can be played with four different controller modes: the Wiimote, the Wiimote plus nunchuck, the classic controller or even your dusty old GameCube controller. This offers a great way for anyone’s particular fighting style to be matched to their favorite controller scheme. The one that you’ll probably use most is the Wiimote and nunchuck. This combo doesn’t offer as much Wiimote madness as you would think, but this setup offers you some extra powerful moves when using Jutsu (special attacks).
The game is really entertaining and can be enjoyed on several levels — from the novice to the ground and pound expert. Although all fighting attacks are based upon strong, weak, and Jutsu moves, you can do some neat combos, too. I could only put six or seven to memory, but if you are a combo fanatic you’ll want to study the entire list of different moves made available to you to get that extra edge against your opponents.
The mission mode of the game offers a pretty good storyline and adds some good humor to the dialogue. Sarcasm, temper tantrums, egotistical bragging, and outright insults are sprinkled well throughout the plot. In this section of the game, the narration sets you up for your upcoming battles.
There are different tasks or goals that you must accomplish during each mission and may involve using certain moves to defeat your opponent or scoring in a certain way. The single player and multiplayer is self explanatory while the mini-game mode offers a breather from your ninja fighting activities and gives you the chance to just play arcade-like games for fun.
Ok, so how’s the fighting? You can go deep or shallow. You’ll get the most pleasure by memorizing a set of moves, but the game can be enjoyed on a pure button mashing level as well. When you really start to take command of actually doing things on purpose instead of doing things by chance; this is where the satisfaction starts to come in.
For a “simple” fighter, NCoNR surprises you with its long list of fighting combo attacks. Each character in the game has their own special Jutsu and the success of these moves depends on whether you can perform them without it being blocked. Use your Jutsu at the wrong time, and you waste all your “chakra” energy and will have to build this up again.
Your basic attacks are strong and weak, which can be modified while doing them in the air or low to the ground. The “A” button and “down” on the directional pad take up most of the fighting duties while right d-pad engages the Jutsu moves. If you string these moves in different sequences, you’ll pull off new attacks.
The ring you fight in has weaknesses in the rails and if you knock your opponent through these spots, you’re rewarded with an in-the-air animation sequence where you can knock the stuffing out of your opponent before you land in a new fighting location. Very satisfying indeed.
Almost everything you do in the game will unlock something for you whether you’re just playing single player mode or engaging in the mini games. This keeps the game fun and adds more to the title instead of being just an average beat ‘em up.
There is a truckload of fighting in this game and I wore out my thumbs in a matter of hours furiously trying to beat back my opponents or doing a long string of combos. The AI is pretty decent and some of the harder matches will really force you to do some homework by looking up moves in the list to try to outwit your opponents.
The graphics are in the true Naruto cell shaded tradition and the animations and fighting action is done well. Voice acting is good and the music is catchy.
Overall, the game is just plain fun. With the multiplayer feature (offline only), the mini games and fun fighting action, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution isn’t just a good fighter for the Wii, it stands on its own against the competition on other consoles, too.
