Xbox Dad Goes All Ninja On Us
Published September 24, 2008
Hello … my name is Jason Buffington and my day job is in the Windows Storage Solutions team. On nights and weekends, I play as DarkJediHunter. This year, the other Xbox Dad (Festive Turkey) has been sharing this column with me, so that I can share my favorite family games with you. My sons are ten and seven, my daughter is four and along with my wife, we all game.
As much as I would love to weigh in on Ninja Gaiden® II—that is not a ninja game that Xbox Dad covers (Hardcore covered that one). Instead, let's talk about the other cool ninja game that my oldest son introduced me to—NARUTO™: Rise of a Ninja.
The game is based on a popular anime series.
Now on Xbox 360®, NARUTO: Rise of a Ninja does a great job of immersing the player into the story of Naruto, a twelve year old ninja-in-training who seems more interested in pranks than studying ninjutsu. But Naruto is still determined to become the greatest ninja ever. As the game begins, you are disgraced by not passing the local ninja academy's exam—mostly because you haven't been taking it seriously. You'll spend the rest of the game developing your ninja skills, beating up progressively more difficult bad guys, and making friends with the rest of the villagers. Of course, to make friends and progress, you'll end up doing quite a few side quests.
From a gaming experience point of view, the visuals are very similar to the TV show on which the game is based—stylized anime with bright colors, sharp lines, and an exaggerated foreground/background allowing the player to feel they are in the TV series/comic-book world. Couple that with some good voiceover work and a fairly good variety of side quests from the town, and the experience is surprisingly good for a kids' game.
For game play, you'll spend most of the time in one of three major kinds of activities—all of which are similar to most adult-oriented RPG/action games—city wandering, missions/quests/errands, and big battles.
Wandering Around the City
Because one of the story line's premises is that you are unliked by the community, everyone begins with a purple frown logo over their head. As your reputation grows, or as you do errands for those with other icons above their heads, their frowns turn upside down into yellow smileys. And similar to your favorite RPG "gather the flag" side quests, if you get enough of the villagers happy with you, then achievement points are in your future. More achievements await you for completing all of one type of side quest.
Villagers either like you or they don't. Doing side quests will raise your reputation.
Missions and Quests
As you progress through the way of the ninja, you will meet others who can teach you new skills and moves, but will assign you missions in order to earn the progression. This puts you in a level-crawler action mode, where you'll have to scale buildings and beat up lots of bad guy minions.
Head-to-Head Combat
Between the random encounters during missions, and of course, the boss battles of most action games, you'll come up against some big baddies where you can use your best ninja skills. These take you to a mode where the action buttons become Kick, Fist, Block and Jump.
The head-to-head battles get very exciting.
You'll also learn special moves ("jutsu") throughout the game that have some very impressive (or silly) combination attacks. These jutsu are keyed from combinations of both analog sticks, followed by some timed button clicks. My favorite is the shadow clone jutsu which duplicates you up to five times, each one striking the same enemy for devastating damage.
The shadow clone jutsu creates multiples of you, each ready to attack.
When you put it all together, you have a solid action/fighting game for pre-teens (my son started playing it when he was nine and had a great time). While Naruto is more kid-appropriate than many of the head-to-head games, your Naruto-playing child will also be building gamer skills for other fighting-genre games like Dragon Ball Z®: Burst Limit, Dead or Alive® 4, SoulCalibur® IV, and of course, Ninja Gaiden II. If your child likes anime TV or is ready for their next step in action-style games, then check out NARUTO: Rise of a Ninja—and don't forget the TV series (with early seasons on DVD) that will add even more depth to their gaming experience. You know, every kids' game ought to come with a TV show.
Article by DarkJediHunter (Jason Buffington)
