Ultimate Ninja Storm

Players will be able to switch characters during the fight from Narutimate

I expected lots of intense action from what’s been presented as the final game of the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, and to its credit, delivers. The characters and over-the-top battles look and feel great, and the story pays off in a satisfying way. On the other hand, even the best combat system in the world would be wasted if there are no worthy opponents to be found.

That's not to say that this combat is the best, but it is pretty strong. Fights are fast and fierce, and are treated like major events by way of plenty of cinematic camera angles and powerful jutsu moves at your disposal. The controls are simple and the most responsive of the Storm games to date. What I liked most, however, was the ability to switch between your active fighter and two support characters on the fly by moving the right analog stick. This let me use my characters for both active and support roles, and didn’t limit them to one task in a fight. In one battle, I was able launch a series of punches with Hinata before calling for an assist from Narutimate to deal more damage, and then switching to Hashirama Senju to recharge my energy fast for a follow-up jutsu attack.

That strategy isn’t always needed, though, because the AI opponents have a bad habit of falling into a repetitive cycle of constantly evading and spamming ranged attacks. This happened to me many times and became incredibly annoying, especially when I couldn’t get an attack off without taking a kunai to the face. That’s made even worse by the way some areas of the Story Mode give the computer a huge edge in battle by increasing their damage, which can make things feel very cheap and unfair.

I was also let down by the presentation of the brief, five to six-hour story mode, which at the beginning promises epic battles and interactive scenes that the Storm series is known for. But just 15 minutes into it, I was shown long montage cutscenes with motion-comic style effects instead of anime clips. It wasn’t until later in the story that Storm 4 switches to in-game cutscenes, which look much better than the static images. Even then, however, the lip syncing to the audio is off on both the Japanese and English audio tracks, which create some awkward moments. It’s disappointing that the level of storytelling polish isn’t up to the standard I’d expected. At least the end of Story Mode hints at what may come next for Narutimate and his friends in an exciting way.