Naruto Ninja Council 3 is the latest game to be based on the popular anime and manga series. The action revolves around young Naruto Uzumaki and his friends as they laugh, love, and kick butt (they are ninjas in training after all). The game is the first Ninja Council game for the Nintendo DS and promises to let fans of the series battle with and against a broad sampling of faces from the series. We had the chance to check out an early work-in-progress build of the Japanese version of the game to see how it's coming together.
The game will feature several different modes such as timed, scroll collection, and head-to-head versus, which will support up to four players via Wi-Fi. Rather than being tied too closely to a set storyline, the action in Ninja Council 3 will revolve around more than 40 missions that will find you teaming up with partners of your choice. You'll find a selection of 20 characters taken from the series, each with his or her own unique attacks. The roster of characters will unlock over the course of the game, starting you out with a modest selection of characters that will eventually grow to the full 20. As you open up characters, you'll be able to customize them to a degree by slotting in different techniques. You'll learn that as you go through the game, you'll need to have certain techniques equipped to succeed. Rather than tie the techniques to a specific character, Ninja Council 3 lets you apply any available technique to any character, letting you partner up with the characters you want without jeopardizing your ability to progress.
Control is shaping up to be a good mix of conventional mechanics and support for the various bells and whistles on the DS. You'll move around with the D pad and use the face buttons to jump and use assorted attacks. When you use special techniques, the game relies on the DS's touch screen and microphone, requiring you to tap or blow in specific sequences. Fans of the series should have an advantage over newcomers to Naruto, as the actions you'll have to perform will synch up with the various attacks.
The visuals in the game are looking solid on the DS, with the character sprites featuring a good amount of detail and smooth animation. Naruto and company are all recognizable as you play. The environments we saw for a few missions were looking good, albeit a bit too low-key. However, there was a respectable amount of familiar places, as well as the promise of more locales to come for Naruto and company. The audio in the game was sounding good, though we weren't able to make out much due to the loud environment of our demo.
Based on what we've seen so far, Naruto Ninja Council 3 is shaping up to be a solid action title with plenty of variety. The open-ended structure of it seems to work well, letting players tackle the action in manageable chunks. The flexibility in the character selection also seems to be a smart touch, letting fans stick with their favorite crew.
i am so looking forward to this game i liked the other games but with the new addition of characters it looks very good.
im pretty excited for this game. hope its good.
the guy's that r saying its bad do no that its Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 4, not the third one rite? cuz the TOMY ppl got lazy and cancelled the english Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 3 and called the english Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 4 - Naruto ninja council 3.
I'm a huge fan of the anime, so I hope that this turns out well. I haven't played any of the Naruto video games before, so this will be my first if I choose to get it.
darn man.. this game is not even so good.. gamespot have to be so nice with reviews.. i mean im a hardcore naruto fan i stil hate this game, Ultimate ninja is good... lol
it is not a such great, i'l give to this game poor
WOW!!!
I WANNA PLAY THIS GAME
It will be a small miricle if this games turns out to be any good. But if it does... Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!
hmmmmmmmm. hopefully it turns out good
please let naruto use Rasengan
In japan it,s called "Ninja council 4", thing is... they screwed up the game by removing some of the 35 playable character to fit the anime episodes in the US. Nice brawler though, sort of plays like "Jump superstars or ultimate stars" but with voice acting. Nice little detail for all Naruto fans.
It looks pretty bad.
i heard that its a short game from a guy that has this game from japan but ninja council 4 is way better i have but hard for me to understand but i still kick some ninja asss to ninja council 4 getting somewhere they import games
the game sounds pretty cool...hopefully it will survive it's expectations....
Like I say when comparing with the WIi, I don't care about grapics (looks at FarCry Vengence) .........well par grapics. But Im more into gameplay, so if this game could give me a kickass time then I'll be sure to check it out.
Ah. The GBA has had titles with better graphics than the top screen of those screenshots.
I like this kind of naruto game more than this 3d Beat em up for DS
the screenshots look pretty kool:)
wow...this game doesnt look very good at all
finally i wana play thid gsme in english n notjap
Awsome. I have been waiting for this to come to DS.
Flop.
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Please god. Not another Naruto game.
"Ah people you should look at the 1up preview. This isn't the first Naruto game for the DS it's actually the second. Yes they are skipping the first for some odd reason. What's even worse is they are removing characters, missions because they say they don't want to spoil anything. If they were to bring over the actual Ninja Council 3 they wouldn't have to do jack **** By the time they would actually be bringing over the 4th there would be no need to remove characters, missions. Complain to D3 and Tomy. Complain to viz tell them to bring over the real Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 3 instead of claiming Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 4 as Ninja Council 3." Well 1up suck ass!!! there so biases in so many ways.
Ah people you should look at the 1up preview. This isn't the first Naruto game for the DS it's actually the second. Yes they are skipping the first for some odd reason. What's even worse is they are removing characters, missions because they say they don't want to spoil anything. If they were to bring over the actual Ninja Council 3 they wouldn't have to do jack **** By the time they would actually be bringing over the 4th there would be no need to remove characters, missions. Complain to D3 and Tomy. Complain to viz tell them to bring over the real Naruto: Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 3 instead of claiming Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 4 as Ninja Council 3.
i wonder how much theywil be using the touchscreen feature.
Since I'm a fan of naruto, this looks pretty sweet.
Gamespot didn't even review the first two for the GBA. Suddenly out of no where they have a preview on it. Also they might not have all the chracters.
Doesn't seem too interesting as of now.
ill keep my eye on this. not sure if i like it.