Take or leave the dull village missions, the stunning visuals and fast paced combat more than make up for it.
(-) the combat system can't escape the sensation that it can be just random button mashing / Ultimate Mission Mode is tedious and time consuming
It's no secret that there's a lot of adaptations for the anime series that is unofficially known for containing the most ninjas. There have been various appearances across all platforms for Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. They're all exclusive and very different among each-other. Naruto Ultimate Ninja is a side-scrolling 2D fighter similar to the mega-hit Super Smash Bros. Clash of Ninja is a more traditional fighter in 3D environments but 2D action. Ultimate Ninja Storm attempts to make a weird hybrid between those two franchises, resulting in a game suspiciously similar to Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi. But Ultimate Ninja Storm is by no means derivative. It takes the fighting series acquired from its source material to brand new heights, and offers some fast paced and flashy action which will please long-time fans and even earn the attention of others who are vaguely eager to look more into the source material. But unfortunately, the moments where Ultimate Ninja Storm utilizes its strengths are far from being the bulk of the experience.
When first turning on the game in your PS3, you're going to be forced to do a 4 GB installation, which while it only takes around ten minutes, it's pretty difficult to determine why it's even necessary, especially since it does nothing to influence the somewhat lengthy loading times. And once that's over with, you'll most likely want to pick a favorite character and start battling. But the natural course of the game rests in the Ultimate Mission mode. If you've played the original Ultimate Ninja, you'd know that this is a free-roaming adventure mode where you gather some overwhelmingly useless items and take on a wide spectrum of needless missions. You do get a fairly accurate depiction of the Hidden Leaf Village, but hardly anyone who inhabits it has anything interesting to say to you. All you'll be doing for most of the time is breaking open pots to grab items, and the occasional scroll to pay for bonus items like collectibles and music.
The main direction of the Ultimate Mission mode is, like the name suggests, doing missions. You have a good handful of them, ranging in difficulty scales from D to S, with different varied objectives. But unfortunately, a lot of them aren't any fun. One of them is done by simply playing the game for X amount of hours, and once you complete the mission, a new one will be added at a higher rank to play even more hours, and will also wield a bigger prize for your mission exp, which is essential to take on other missions. Another demands you to take a certain amount of steps, but using Naruto's chakra to speed up his movement will help immensely with this one. And others are just plain stupid, but mildly amusing, like finding five cats through some platforming obstacles, and playing hide-and-go-seek with a child. These sometimes mundane missions however seem like the bright spot in this mode, since most of your time you'll be wondering through the village with nothing to do, and it gets boring fast. Luckily some missions involve battles, but very few.
Ultimate Ninja Storm more than redeems itself thanks in no small part to its combat system. You have full 3D control over your character in some pretty flat but large environments. Combat is a bit on the casual side, but the action is so quick paced and full of thrills and intensity that it makes the simplicity go unnoticed. The controls are simple and work well. You have one basic attack button (circle) which you can use to get different attacks linked together to form combos, if you're lucky enough having a quick time event offered to inflict even more damage. As ninjas, there's the ability to throw some shuriken (square) which is effective for producing slight damage from afar. At any time you can activate your jutsu (triangle), pressing it once or twice to toggle between the intensity of special moves that can be performed. Blocking is also relatively easy to do, but not to the point where you can deflect any amount of punishment from the enemy. Although this control scheme may sound complex reading it off a paper, a player can grasp them surprisingly quickly and learn to play with just about any character that they so please. But on the tails side of the coin, the control scheme can make frequent changes from casual friendly to mindless button mashing, but not to a point severe enough that one could beat anyone by pressing buttons in irrational rage.
None of the ninja fight alone though. When choosing a character, you'll also have two others back you up. They only function for using a single attack at the press of a button, you can't really have full-on 3 vs 3 matches, which the maps aren't nearly large enough to do such a thing successfully anyway. This adds another layer of depth to the combat system, but at the same time can work against it because not all the attacks the characters use are even that useful, and you could potentially grow weary of the rather small roster from the outset by seeing several faces repeatedly.
These battles are in fully dimensional environments and the nature of the combat allows a lot of quick movement and changes in perspective. The camera could very easily be your worst enemy in a game of this type, but it actually does a wonderful job giving you the best view possible, all without needed constant recalibration. Not only does it allow you to play the game despite a great amount of different activity happening in a short amount of time, it also works readily with the great graphics to deliver some really cinematic battles. It really looks as close as a video game adaptation can manage to look like it's television source material, and that can't go unnoticed.
It's a good thing that the combat is so accessible, because the battles are about as fun to watch as they are to play. Putting it bluntly, the graphics in Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm are brilliant. Animation is smooth and slick, almost dreamlike, capturing the very look of the television show which it was based. But the moments when the impressive visuals come into full force are the special attacks. These ground-breaking moves that these ninjas pull off are insane. Naruto, for example, summons shadow clones which mascaraed around the foe, then form a gigantic rope which the proper Naruto form swings around, then slams the foe into the ground. You can even see Naruto's smiling face as the clones hit the screen as the rope animates, and authentic dirt effects and crumbled ground as the enemy is tossed down. It's fun to experiment with other characters and try their special attacks out, because they all look so energetic and intense, making full use of the incredible processing power offered by the PS3. It's because of this, that Ultimate Ninja Storm is almost as fun to merely sit and watch as it is to play.
It's a shame that in order to make the most of the engaging combat system, you'll need to grind through extended hours of the Ultimate Mission mode, which is made up of content that honestly isn't much fun. And it won't be a short trip either. There's only so much wondering through the Hidden Leaf Village before controlling the famous orange-wearing ninja stops being thrilling. But if you can handle the monotony, you'll unlock a large amount of content that can be very useful toward the battle mode, which is well needed because the current roster is so small that you'll probably only have about an hour's worth of motivated gameplay before you're just repeating things over again. As a package overall though, while very little beyond the visual presentation is truly outstanding about Ultimate Ninja Storm, the package is rounded with strength and it's definitely worth playing or owning, whether you're a fan of Naruto or good fighting games in general.