April Edition Live Magazine - April 2014 Issue. | Page 82

review

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3
Full Burst
in a world of fighting games that rely
heavily on practice and technique,
the Naruto series has always strived
to be different and embrace its own
mythos. My knowledge of the universe may come second-hand and
my patience for shonen’s particular
tropes may run thinner the older I
get, but one thing remains true: the
Naruto world makes for a damn
good fighting game.
For those who follow Naruto, the
story begins just after the defeat of
Pain and Naruto becoming the Hero
of Konoha. (For those who don’t,
that’s about 450 chapters in.) After
so many games in the past starting from the very, very beginning
of the tale and only getting a few

characters to choose from, all with
their signature attacks, many with alternate costumes and special teams
to play around with.
But it’s not about the story. A game
with a name like Ultimate Ninja
STORM 3: Full Burst could only be
about the fighting. Utilising a 3D battlefield allows the ninjas to actually
move like ninjas, able to dash and
dodge and teleport about the space
with satisfying speed. Taking a leaf
from Marvel vs Capcom, each character has three health bars instead
of going three rounds. Two support
characters can assist you in battle
but cannot be switched in, instead
requiring a short cooldown period
before being able to be summoned

“..FIGHTING IN THE INCREDIBLY LAGGY ONLINE
MODE IS AN EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION..”
arcs in, not having to trudge through
those early moments to get to the
good stuff comes as a great relief. If
you’ve never experienced the series,
though, watch out. Terms and references come thick and fast, and a
newcomer will quickly be completely
lost as to why everybody is yelling
about Sasuke and Jinchuriki. Fans
and newcomers alike, however, will
be very pleased once they reach the
character select menu in multiplayer. Full Burst boasts a whopping 65

once more. The concept is there, but
the execution allows for some very
cheap tactics that may not appeal to
the more seasoned fighter.
Similarly, our old friends the super
and ultra attacks are present as well.
Rather than boost your meter via
landing attacks a la Street Fighter,
you instead charge up and release
your Chakra through an incredibly
simple three-button input. Though
the computer is nice enough to not

abuse this, fighting in the incredibly
laggy online mode is an exercise in
frustration with nothing to stop players from spamming these attacks
over and over again. Full Burst puts
a lot of mechanics like these into
its bag - Dynasty Warriors-style action sequences, fights against skyscraper-sized foes, QTE-styled battle cutscenes - but all of them suffer
the curse of being a much lighter,
less satisfying version of each concept.
This is doubly true with the story
missions. Inside missions, you are
given the choice to either take the
Hero route or the Legend Route,
but these really boil down to Easy or
Hard paths. Confusing at best and
forcing players to run the story twice
at worst to gather the experience
within each route, strangely going
towards boosting your choices of inbattle items. None of this is helped
by the inexplicable slowdown encountered all over the place. I
counted a dozen times in the first
few hours where a character’s lips
were moving long after the dialogue
was over, and while the battles run
smoothly for the most part, apparently the engine dies at the thought
of someone running down a hallway
without lag. It’s disturbing that these
things should still be happening after so many games on this engine.

Griping about the nonsensical story
helps nobody, as tempting as that
is. The fact of the matter is that Full
Burst tried to juggle a dozen different systems and ended up dropping
the ball on nearly all of them. If you
want a simple, fun fighting game
to challenge your mates to that is
bears a massive cache of the source
material, Full Burst is the game for
you. If you’re looking for a game like
Street Fighter that focuses on doing
one thing very, very well, then it’s
best to look elsewhere. This burst
may not be full enough for you.

Written by Aaron Milligan

www.stickytriggerentertainment.com

6.5/10
PROS
•

Huge cast of characters

•

Packed with Naruto Lore/story

•

Easy system to get into

CONS
•
•

Fame rate issues

Shallow super system