Nerd Mentality

REVIEW: Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Council 4

Posted June 29th 2009 by Matt Coy.

Let me state this at the outset:  I don't like Naruto.  I don't like the TV series, the movies, the manga or the fanart.  But this review isn't for me to harp on the franchise in general; it's about Naruto Shippuden:  Ninja Council 4 for the Nintendo DS.  Suffice to say, I did not go into this game with high expectations.

When I played the opening level, I was quite surprised.  It was a fun little side-scrolling beat-‘em-up with some fast gameplay that was simple enough to not bog itself down.  The tutorial level showcased these simple aspects quite well, and my bias against anything Naruto started to dwindle.  However, this is where the fun ended.  After the tutorial ended, the real meat of the game came out in full force, similar to opening a nicely wrapped present only to find a worm-infested piece of rotting meat.

The platforming mechanics fail in many aspects.  Jumping between buildings (read: platforms) is an exercise in frustration.  If you go into a running jump to gain horizontal distance, you drop like a rock, but if you don't run before you jump, your falling speed is suddenly reduced.  It may be based on a cartoon, but having gravity change on a whim isn't good game design.  The mechanics that allow you to run up and jump between walls is also broken.  The same button presses account for both actions; the main thing that determines whether you jump or run up the wall depends on the wall itself.  While this may seem reasonable on paper, Aspect Digital Entertainment seemed to forget to give visible clues on which wall will yield which ability.  Yes, the two types of walls are visibly the same, and you have to guess which wall you have while you're falling down a bottomless pit of death.

The fighting aspects are incredibly unvaried and mostly boring, though it takes a good few hours to realize that every character plays out pretty much the same way.  You have three basic moves: standing attack (which can lead into a 3-hit combo), running attack, and aerial attack.  Each character has the same three moves with only special moves to differentiate between them.  These special moves are performed with the touch screen, and vary between field-area attacks to strong melee-range attacks to basic healing spell (The only notable exception is Rock Lee, who has no special attacks in exchange for heightened speed and jumping prowess).

The story is nothing to play the game for.  For a game that prides itself upon being based off such a "complex and intricate plot" (as shouted by the fanbase), it's a basic plot of "Beat the bad guy because he's bad!" that isn't made any more interesting with its dialog.  The music is also nothing to fuss over, with its incredibly cliché "ninja music" with a rock-flavored twist.  This comes as a surprise because the music in the series is actually pretty good, so it's quite a mystery why they simply didn't port some music over.

However, this game isn't 100% bad.  I was lucky enough to try out the multiplayer with a friend's brother.  The multiplayer is a basic fighting game; hit your opponent until his life bar runs out.  Despite its simply, it's surprisingly frantic with a small amount of strategy involved.  It's nothing tournament-level, but it's definitely fun for an afternoon with your buddies.  However, the lack of single-card download play definitely hurts its ability to become a poor man's Smash Bros. DS.

The multiplayer also made me realize that the single-player could have been so much more if the developer didn't drop the ball so hard and bring it so soon out of the gate.  They really need to take a cue from the original Ninja Gaiden series from the NES era.  Those games clicked platforming and fighting gameplay seamlessly, which this game doesn't do.  It doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a platformer or a beat-'em-up, which makes the game as a whole ultimately fail at both goals.  Oh, and either take your story straight from the series so fans can drool over controlling the destiny of their favorite characters or just drop the story altogether.

This game definitely lived up to my expectations: it's just as bad I thought it would be.  It suffers from gameplay dissonance that squanders any potential this game had and doesn't recover with any other aspect.  It puts nothing new on the table and will probably sell solely on the fact that it's a new Naruto game.  I can only hope that the fans aren't as rabid as they usually are and won't buy enough copies for the company to churn out another sequel.

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