Though the anime is looked down
upon by many, the fighting games of the “Naruto” series have rarely failed to
impress with their many different characters, entertaining combat, and
impressive visual design. The most successful of these games was “Naruto:
Ultimate Ninja Storm” for the Playstation 3, and now its sequel “Naruto
Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2” on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 picks up
right where its predecessor left off with more characters, multiple side
missions, and the same reputation for visual prowess. While it probably won’t
make the manga or the anime of Naruto any new friends, it does have the right
formula to make a fun, if simplistic, fighting game.

The fighting engine in “Ultimate
Ninja Storm 2” is limited to basic one-button combat. There is a single button
for all melee attacks, one for ranged attacks, one for jumping, a block button
and a button for charging up energy for super moves. Each character in the
massive roster of 45 has two kinds of special attacks, regular and ultimate,
and a special form they can assume for brief period called “awakening” that
either gives them entirely new abilities or increases the power and speed of
all of their attacks. While not all of these moves or awakenings are unique,
the flow of combat with the surprisingly large move lists and the super moves
makes the combat fast paced and engaging, though not as physically tasking as
other fighting games like “Street Fighter.” The simplicity has the unfortunate
downside of generally leading to your online opponents just spamming powerful
attacks, but to be fair that is the typical drawback to every fighting game
with long distance abilities.

Unfortunately most of the
characters have to be unlocked during the single player story mode, and that is
where the game loses most of its steam. To the developers credit they managed
to include and even improve upon every major fight that has taken place in the
anime up until now, with most boss fights boiling down to more than just a
typical one on one battle that you would expect. Real variety and creativity
that you wouldn’t expect from a fighting game can be found in these sections,
which is why it’s such a same that you have go through so much boring back and
forth to get to them. Story missions constantly send you from one side of the
map to the other, with nothing to entertain you along the way but digging
through bushes for materials, and the “go here, do this” side missions aren’t
any better. This mode could have been saved with a fast travel system, but the
lack of one turns much of the single player experience into nothing but a
boring waste of time.

On the presentation side of things,
the visuals that the “Ultimate Ninja Storm” series is generally praised for are
only of acceptable quality during the actual fights and the cut scenes that
accompany them. When you’re just running around the world in single player the
graphics are a mess of blurry character models, jagged lines, and obviously
painted backgrounds. The English voice cast includes everyone from the English
dub of the anime and thus is just as bad as what you would expect from the
localized English version, with poorly delivered lines and completely miscast
actors. Fortunately the developers of most “Naruto” games seem to realize how
horrible the English cast is and thus you immediately have the option to switch
all of the voice work to their Japanese counterparts with English subtitles,
though this doesn’t give you access to the ramped up gore that the Japanese
enjoy in their uncensored version of the anime.

While cultural snobs of both
fighting games and anime may not recommend it purely on principle, “Naruto
Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2” should not be looked down upon simply
because of its source material. The characters are varied and the combat
doesn’t get old, not only because all of the beautiful moves but also simply
the bulk of characters at your disposal, particularly with the online combat. While
it’s not a must-play game by any means, it isn’t one that should be idly cast
aside either. It deserves a fair look from the gaming community, especially
from those who aren’t masters at big name fighters.

3.5/5 stars