You better believe it! There’s a new game out for the PSP staring everyone’s favorite knuckle head Hidden Leaf Ninja, Naruto Uzumaki...and it’s surprisingly pretty good. The game has a pretty standard filler story line for a Naruto game, a solid roster of characters and jutsu [ninja skills], and a story lengthy enough to satisfy hardcore fans and casual players alike.
Story:
Going into Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive I wasn’t expecting much, due to past experiences with Naruto games, but after sitting with this for a few hours and getting into it, I have to say the game is very good if you can overlook the AI. Overall the story line is okay; it’s pretty basic for a Naruto filler game: some group is mad at Naruto, in this case the members of a destroyed village, and he and his squad are out to figure out why and help solve the problem with violence, as you may have guessed. While the story is nothing spectacular, it does a good enough job of moving the game along and preventing each mission objective from being exactly the same.
Gameplay:
The game has a ton of missions with a robust story length and numerous free-play missions for when you’ve finished or want a break from the story. While the story line missions only let you use specific characters, the free-play missions allow the player to customize their team of four with any unlocked characters and allow ad-hoc multiplayer for those with friends who own the game. The actual gameplay boils down to exactly what you might expect, fighting, and lots of it. While the fighting system ultimately is comprised of mashing the circle and triangle button to perform combo after combo on your enemy, the fights do end up being a bit varied by pressing them in different orders; in total you end up with about 5 different combos just on circle and triangle letting you cast individual jutsus which will cause much more damage than a combo but will faster eat up your chakra power, the mana energy of the game. During combat you can also use your partners to assist you in a jam, instead of them fighting off on their own, by tapping the square button which is only really helpful if you’re cornered or fighting a boss character. (Though they will usually miss the target and/or strike a different target which doesn’t end up helping you.) With that in mind the computer controlled partners you have for the story missions and for the free-play missions, if you are not fortunate enough to have friends with this game, can sometimes ruin a fight altogether. While the computer can mostly handle itself in an open field fighting situation, it kind of loses sight of what it’s supposed to be doing any other time. For example sometimes you the player are separated from the other three members of the squad and while they fight never ending swarms of baddies, you are sent ahead to kill some baddies of your own and/or open a door of some kind. During such time when the computer is supposed to fight on its own, your partners end up trying to follow you and run into an invisible wall while the enemies have a field day and usually end up killing them before you can reach your goal. This may not seem like a big deal, until you factor in that the cost of reviving a fallen ally is some of the experience you have earned.
Audio & Video:
The game soundtrack is very good, while not the best I’ve ever heard it does feature a nice mix of rockish guitar tracks and fast twangy Japanese numbers that complement the aesthetic of the Naruto world and the fast paced combat perfectly. All of the characters are voiced by their corresponding anime voice actors for both the Japanese and English voice options the game offers which definitely gives the feel that this story belongs somewhere in the timeline of the anime and manga. The cut scenes of the game are done in the form of anime still images which though a little boring to look at are fully voiced which is nice to see on a portable. When it comes to the actual rendered gameplay sections of game the graphics are good when compared to other PSP titles and the animation is smooth with little to no clipping even during cluttered battles.
Overall Score:
Overall the game is playable but at times a bit tedious. It's 7 out of 10 for gameplay due to the computers incompetency, a 10 out of 10 for sound, 8 out of 10 for graphics, and 7 out of 10 for story which nets the game an overall score of 8.25, a must have if you are a fan of Naruto but otherwise you’ll probably get bored and/or frustrated fairly quickly.
"Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive" is on sale March 22, 2011 and is rated T. Action. Developed by Premium Agency Inc. Published by Namco Bandai Games.
