Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 Review
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: CyberConnect2
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Genre: 3-D Fighting
ESRB Rating: Teen

With games based on licences, a reviewer is often left wondering whether their words will have any impact on those reading. If you’re a fan of the licence, you’re probably going to buy or at least rent the game regardless, as the familiar story and setting can probably make up for any glaring errors in game-play. If you know next to nothing about the license, you’ll probably pass, feeling that you need advance knowledge of the scenario and characters to get the most out of it, which is often the case.

The nice thing with a fighting game is that with story not playing a big role, the game can be enjoyed by just about anyone solely for its game-play, though devoted Naruto fans will surely get the most enjoyment out of it. And there’s plenty of game-play and depth to go around.

Naruto is a fast and furious cel-shaded fighter with a massive selection of characters and moves. Combat is deep and challenging, while still being accessible to those unused to fighters by focusing the majority of special moves into a single method of use. By tapping random directions on the control pad followed by the circle button, you’re all but certain to pull out some sort of zany move that will have Japanese symbols flashing across the scene, and a flurry of hits assailing your opponent.

The other buttons are not put to waste though and allow your character to jump and throw weapons among other things. You can also counter your opponent’s moves if your timing is right for added damage and insult. The battles feature many other elements such as power struggles when conflicting moves collide, ultimate moves, and transformations.

Battles take place in 3-D environments, with the combatants aligned on a 2-D plane. You can freely move to different ‘planes’ in the environment, and some battlefields also feature tiered levels. Objects are scattered around the arenas as well, and can be used to assault your opponent, or smashed apart to reveal health restoring goodies or weapons.

You can only choose a couple moves, called Jutsu, to bring into each battle with you, and additional moves can be unlocked for characters as you progress through the single-player campaign. You can also unlock numerous other goodies through the game’s Tanzaku Market, including videos, music tracks, cards and more. If you’re a fan of the cel-shading style, you’ll love UN 3. The cel-shaded graphics are outstanding, with vibrant colors and fluid motions filling the screen.

I found the soundtrack to be a mixed bag. I enjoyed some songs, but found others wince inducing. You have the option of Japanese or English voices for battle shouts and other dialogue, and the sound effects give a great sense of the impact of thunderous strikes and explosive blasts.

Naruto UN 3 is a great fighter, without a doubt designed with the fans in mind, but one that could be enjoyed by anyone looking for a solid and accessible fighting engine with a lot of depth.

News: The ever expanding Naruto universe will see two more releases in the near future. Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2 will launch in late June for the PSP, with Ultimate Ninja Storm tentatively scheduled for a 4th quarter 2008 release on PS3.

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Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: April 27, 2008
Genre: Kart Racing
ESRB Rating: Everyone

The original Mario Kart on the SNES all but invented the mascot kart racing genre, with numerous imitators springing up in its wake, including Crash Team Racing, Chocobo Racing, Digimon Racing, and many more. Few have been able to come close to Mario Kart’s quality or success though, with each subsequent Mario Kart release reaffirming that it is still firmly on top of the kart racing heap.

Mario Kart Wii is no different. Though by no means revolutionary, it gives gamers more of what they want from the series, with more characters, more tracks and more multiplayer battle options.

Game-play consists of manoeuvring your way through a multitude of obstacles, driving over power-up boxes that give you items that can be used to help you or hinder your opponents, drifting through tight corners, and always keeping an ever watchful eye out for the scattered zip pads and stunt ramps which offer speed boosts.

Yes, stunt ramps are a new addition to the Mario Kart formula, as are motorbikes. All vehicles have multiple ratings categories, and are further broken down into classes. Characters are restricted to using the vehicles in one class, and tinkering with different character and vehicle combinations is a good deal of fun. Vehicles handle differently, and motorbikes add the option of performing speed-boosting wheelies into the mix, giving you many hard decisions on which to choose.

While the game can be a blast to play alone, multiplayer is truly where it shines. Whether duking it out in full field races with your friends, or competing in battle tournaments online, the tight controls, excellent course design, including numerous classic courses from Mario Kart’s of yore, and great balance all combine to make Mario Kart Wii a thrill to play against others.

The multiplayer aspect has been greatly expanded with a full set of online features, including leaderboards, and team battles. The classic balloon battles are back, but in a somewhat disappointing twist, they require you to be part of a randomly determined team, eliminating the great free-for-alls of battle modes past. Another mode is coin runner, which has you charging around the courses picking up coins, with the team with the most coins as time runs out being declared the victor.

Course design is without a doubt the one area that sets Mario Kart above all the others, making all game modes better as a result. The courses feature a nice ramping of difficulty as you progress through the tracks, and have the perfect blend of risk/reward elements and unique obstacles and features to make each track uniquely enjoyable. The risky shortcuts and possibility of disaster lurking around every corner means that no race is ever won until the bitter end.

The graphics are sharp and colourful, with classic tracks brought to stunning new life, and a smooth frame rate. The frame rate takes a slight hit in split screen, but remains more than solid. Music is bouncy and jazzy, but speeds up and turns sinister and eerie as the races hit the final stretch, a technique that’s been used since the first game to great effect. The sound effects and voice work are solid.

The Wii Wheel is for all intents and purposes just a glorified version of the Wii remote, but is still a blast to play around with, and feels great in your hands. It has the perfect weight and feel, and the B button on the backside of it is large and should be easily reached by gamers of any hand size.

There’s always the issue of responsiveness with the wheel or remote though, and for a game requiring such precise actions and timing, you may be better served using a traditional control pad, at least for matches or races you desperately want to win.

Mario Kart Wii continues to build upon the solid foundation of its predecessors with some new innovations and the same classic game-play. Gamers of all ages should have a blast playing this game, online or off.

News: The Wii Wheel which comes packed with every copy of Mario Kart Wii can also be configured to play with other games which utilize similar steering configuration. It’s expected that more games in the future will be designed more specifically for the Wii Wheel as well.

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Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Epic Games
Release Date: November 7, 2006
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
ESRB Rating: Mature

Gears of War is the well known and much-hyped shooter from Epic Games that largely stood up to that hype and delivered one of the great early killer apps for the Xbox 360, going on to become the X360’s best selling game until the arrival of Halo 3.

The story of GoW is set some years after a great calamitous horde of mutants swept across the planet, destroying every city in their wake and leaving the world as little more than a scarred wasteland. You see this harsh, war torn land through the eyes of Marcus Pheonix, a hulking brute of a man with an unknown past who’s stuck rotting away in prison. To your rescue comes your old buddy Dom to bust you out of the clink and join you in your fight against the horde, later to be joined by additional party members Augustus and Damon.

The story doesn’t bother trying to be overly deep or philosophical, but has just the right mix of mystery and suspense to keep it interesting. The character’s are also engaging and often quite humorous, which is a nice change of pace from the otherwise dark and gritty world.

Game-play is what separates GoW from the shooter crowd, straddling a nice line between slower paced tactical shooters and more intense FPS games like Halo. The game-play is driven by its cover system, whereby nearly anything can be used to shield you from enemy fire, allowing you to duck or hide while under fire, and quickly pop out to blast enemies when the stream of bullets halts.

This system would not work nearly as well if the levels weren’t designed as well as they are. Ruined cities, underground tunnels and decrepit mansions are all filled with just the right mix of open terrain and cover spots, allowing you to gun down your enemies and strategically plan your next course of action, picking out the next best spot to find shelter that will also give you a good clean shot at your foes.

If you think you can treat GoW like any other shooter and ignore the cover system, simply running around madly firing at everything in sight, think again. You’ll find yourself on a quick one-way ticket to the hereafter with an unhealthy case of lead poisoning.

The game controls superbly, with one main button being used to control a variety of actions in conjunction with the analog stick. This makes the game much more accessible to those unfamiliar with shooters, who may find the control schemes on those other games daunting.

Gears features a healthy dose of unique alien baddies to lay waste to, each with their own combat styles, strengths and weaknesses, that each require different tactics to dispose of. The enemies are all suitably gruesome and well detailed, and die in many hideous and creative ways.

Speaking of detail, the one area other than the controls that will make this game appealing to just about anyone are the stunning graphics. They were largely the cause for the tremendous amount of hype and it’s easy to see why.

Even a year and a half after its release this is still one of the most stunningly beautiful games ever crafted. Levels are large, well designed and gorgeous, with incredible detail. Character models are fantastic, with rippling muscles and fluid animation. Light and weather effects are superb, and the gore from your many kills is suitably detailed and gruesome.

Sound is outstanding, highlighted by the thundering sounds of explosions and gun fire. The soundtrack is perhaps an odd stylistic choice, being almost entirely orchestral as opposed to pumping rock or hip hop, but the epic and sometimes forlorn tone of the music fits perfectly with the wasted world you traverse.

In addition to the main single player campaign, there is multiplayer, which is a large focus of many developers now. Not only can you brave through the entire main campaign with a buddy in split screen or online (and they should at the very least be more competent than your A.I partners), but you also have the usual collection of deathmatch modes for multiple players to throw down in.

The increased tactical aspect of the game-play adds great depth to the multiplayer battles, requiring a good deal of skill and teamwork to get by. You can’t simply rely on reflexes or having the biggest gun, though that never hurts.

There are 4 multiplayer battle modes that can be contested on 16 different maps, full of their own unique layouts and secrets. You can acquire numerous achievements by playing online and accomplishing a variety of goals, and there are also rankings that are based on the ranking matches played.

As with any game with an online element you get your fair share of quitters, but as the game has now been out for some time, the community left playing online is largely made of the most devoted players, with the casual players who are more likely to lame out having moved on to the next big thing. It’s a perfect time to hop into the online realm of GoW.

Gears of War is a beautiful game with enjoyable play mechanics and a lot of fun to be had online. If you’re looking for a shooter with a slightly different feel, or simply want to see what all the fuss is about, you really should not hesitate to check it out.

News: All is quiet on the Gears of War movie front, but with the recent announcement that the rumored BioShock movie is now officially underway, expect more from the Gears of War movie camp in the near future.

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Crytek came out of nowhere and burst onto the scene in 2004 with Far Cry, beating Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 to the punch with a game that arguably looked even better than the two highly anticipated releases. With a lush jungle setting and fantastic draw distances, Far Cry still looks impressive today, but it pales in comparison to 2007’s Crysis.

Crysis, the spiritual sequel to Far Cry (the actual sequel is being developed by a different company, surpasses its predecessor in every way and vaults to the top of a crowded cadre of first person shooters. With amazing graphics and production values and innovative freeform gameplay, Crysis holds its own against competitors like Call of Duty 4, Rainbow 6: Vegas, and The Orange Box.

Crysis is a first person shooter set in the near future, where you play as a US Special Forces operative wearing armor that gives you all the good superpowers except for flying or looking good in spandex. Endowed with strength, armor, invisibility, and speed, you must infiltrate an island in the Pacific to stop the North Korean army from doing a bunch of stuff.

It is unlikely that you will care about the specifics, though, because the story in Crysis is about as gripping as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that only exists as an excuse to have him blow stuff up. Thankfully, instead of being forced to watch the Governator have all the fun, Crysis gives you the power. Even more than in Far Cry, and certainly more than in most shooters, you can choose your own adventure.

Stealthy players can sneak through bushes with a silenced gun, using their cloak to infiltrate enemy lines. More action oriented players might charge right in with a stolen vehicle and blow the place to pieces, pausing only to lift an explosive barrel over their head to hurl it into a shack. Cowards like me will just run away until an objective requires them to shoot something. Crysis allows you to play however you want to play, and the fun you can get from such an open canvas is hardly limited.

And what a canvas it is. Crysis excels technically, with graphics that easily exceed every other game and a destructible environment that one-ups Half-Life 2’s seesaw physics puzzles and turns the world into a constantly changing battlefield.

Trees topple under a hail of machinegun bullets, enemy grenades destroy the shack you were hiding in, and wheels blow out from under you as you commandeer enemy jeeps. The interactivity of Crysis’s environment is great, from a lack of barriers or invisible walls to indigenous wildlife (or Korean soldiers) that can be picked up and thrown into each other.

All this comes at a price, though. Crysis looks like it’s a game from at least a year in the future, and its system requirements approximate that. A fast CPU, lots of RAM, and a new video card will allow you to experience Crysis in (almost) all of its glory, but players with less powerful systems will have to make do with lowered graphics settings and resolutions. Crysis looks great, but if you have to run every game on the highest possible settings, you’ll need to pay for a rig that can do it.

Technical and story issues aside, Crysis offers freedom, graphics, and gameplay that set it apart from more linear shooters. With AI that often (but not always) manages to stand up to the challenge of fighting against a player who has almost no limits placed on him, Crysis has a place in every gamer’s collection as one of the best first person shooters to come out recently. As the first game in a planned trilogy, Crysis promises to be a fountain of graphical and interactive innovation for a long time to come.

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The year is 1191, and the Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. Saladin has captured the city of Jerusalem, and Richard the Lionheart has arrived with an army to take it back. Caught up in the war and beset by slavery, poverty and disease, the Kingdom of Jerusalem is a dark place, but all hope is not lost.

You are a member of the mysterious Brotherhood of Assassins, and as you delve into the heart of the crusade and the powerful wills that drive it, you will get a chance to alleviate the suffering, and punish the guilty. Silent, fast and deadly, you are Altaïr.

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Assassin’s Creed is a third-person stealth/action game. Playing as the assassin Altaïr ibn La-Ahad, you are allied neither with the Crusaders nor the Saracens, but sent to kill nine historical figures who are propagating the Crusades.

Your quest will take you across the Kingdom of Jerusalem to three major cities: Jerusalem itself which has recently been surrendered to the Saracens; the coastal city of Acre which serves as a stronghold for Richard the Lionheart; and the Saracen capital of Damascus.

Great care has gone into maintaining a sense of realism. Each city has a distinctly unique look and feel to it, and has been constructed to closely resemble how their medieval world counterparts were thought to look. The brotherhood of which Altaïr is a member is based on the original assassins, the sect of hashshashin; and the nine men that he is sent to kill are (with some artistic license taken) real persons of importance who died in the Holy Land around the year 1191.

The events of 1191 Palestine are not all of the goings-on in Assassin’s Creed though. The game also follows a storyline taking place in 2012, where one of Altaïr’s descendants ends up under great pressure to find out what exactly his ancestor was up to all those years ago.

This plot is rather minor in terms of time spent playing and feels more like an intermission in between Altaïr’s assassinations, but it has a significant impact on the story. As it appears, something that Altaïr did or saw during the time of the Third Crusade is of critical importance even many centuries later, to a point where some people will stop at nothing to find out just what it was.

While playing Assassin’s Creed, it’s easy to feel like Altaïr. The controls are intuitive and responsive, and leaping from rooftop to rooftop and grabbing onto walls doesn’t take much more than holding down a single button. Unlike in Ubisoft Montreal’s earlier Prince of Persia trilogy, there is no set “level path” to follow, nor any telltale flag poles or outcroppings to look for. Almost any kind of architecture you can see, you can also climb; so for any place you’re trying to get to, there’s a multitude of paths to take you there.

The combat system, while not all that deep, still features some variety. Altaïr carries several weapons, his main assassination tool being a blade concealed in a sheath on his wrist, complete with a spring-mechanism that can quickly eject it when the situation calls for it. It’s a good weapon for a quick kill, but using it successfully generally requires your target to be unaware of your intentions.

For general combat you also have a long sword and a dagger, the latter being a bit faster but suffering from shorter range. They handle pretty much the same, though. Finally, you carry a number of throwing knives that come in handy for taking out fleeing opponents, or when you happen to be spotted by faraway sentries.

Even when surrounded by hostile guards, the combat isn’t all that challenging, and after a bit of practice you’ll probably notice that you can take on entire patrols by yourself. Once you unlock the counterattack feature, you will also be able to dispose of enemies quickly and in very cinematic ways, depending on what weapon you use and your position in relation to that of your opponent.

Like with the acrobatics, it makes you look cool and feel skilled without actually having to do that much controller-manipulating. As you progress through the main story, you will also continuously receive better equipment and unlock new abilities, such as the abovementioned counterattack, or the ability to grab onto ledges in mid-fall.

The core gameplay, and the general feel and atmosphere of the game, are without a doubt Assassin’s Creed’s strongest points. Superbly motion-captured and with excellent graphics, it’s a pleasure just watching Altaïr make his way from one place to another.

In the major cities, whether you gently push your way through ubiquitous crowds who have no idea of your true nature, or watch from a tower high above street level; the game really manages to make you feel like a predator. You can be like a lion moving among sheep, or like a bird of prey gliding silently above them.

Even in the fairly large “Kingdom” area that lies in between all of the cities, you get a sense of immersion just from riding around. The horseback riding in Assassin’s Creed feels realistic like nothing we have seen before, even in games that feature horses as a much more central part.

When the dust rises up off the ground as you slowly trot your horse through the middle of a small village to seem inconspicuous to a passing crusader patrol, it’s like you can almost feel the heat of the Sun on your shoulders even as you sit by the screen. Assassination has never felt this up close and personal before.

However, in spite of the attention paid to detail in making the world and its inhabitants seem alive, Assassin’s Creed is not an RPG. Much like in a Grand Theft Auto world, other than killing them, there is very little you can do to interact with people that aren’t directly involved with your quests. Passers-by will get angry if you bump into them or comment if they see you climb a wall, but that’s about it.

The audio works fairly well too. In the cities there is a lot of hustle and bustle as you’d expect, with merchants, beggars and town criers calling out; though after some time, the messages will start to feel very familiar. As you scale a high building, the noise will start to gradually soften and die down, and when you reach high enough it will be near quiet, save for the wind and the screeching of the occasional eagle.

So far, it would seem like Assassin’s Creed could be a great game. It looks great and plays very well, and it manages to tell a good story as well as making you feel like an assassin. On one point though, it falls short.

Explaining their original smash hit Halo, Bungie Software employees talked about a concept that was at the core of their game design, called “30 seconds of fun”. The point of this was to time and again put the player in heart-pounding, roughly half-minute long intervals of great gameplay before offering some respite. Variations on this will then repeat over and over throughout the game. As long as they managed to nail those 30 seconds of fun, the entire game would by extension be fun too.

Ubisoft Montreal, it seems, has utilized a similar development strategy, but not quite nailed it. You certainly have your 30 seconds, as most things you do in Assassin’s Creed are great fun, the first time around – but you will end up doing them over and over again, and eventually the novelty wears off.

As it stands, when you get an assassination assignment, you go to the city where your target can be found, and once there you will have to do some reconnaissance in order to find a good time and place to strike. There are a handful of these recon quests you can do, such as pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and beating down criers for information.

While moving around a city you also have some other side quest options, like scaling the district’s high buildings to get a better view of the area, and more points of interest revealed on your map; or saving citizens harassed by city guards, which will make them help you in turn when you are in similar trouble.

All these side quests are decent in their own right, but after your very first assassination mission you will probably have done them all at least once, and subsequently know exactly what to expect when you get to a new city. Toward the later missions of the game, the “reconnaissance” you have to do will feel like little more than a checklist of objectives that you’ve already completed ten times each.

Producer Jade Raymond mentions in one interview how repetition is something they’re definitely trying to avoid in Assassin’s Creed, when ironically enough it ends up being the game’s greatest shortcoming. Closing up on the halfway point you will have been in each of the three major cities once, by which time you will to some extent have experienced the best the game has to offer, and it’s not until toward the end that things start becoming really interesting again.

If Assassin’s Creed could somehow have extended its “30 seconds of fun” from the first half of the game and made it last all the way, it would have been a truly great game. As it stands, it’s “merely” a very good one. The more you are into the type of games that make you feel like you are the character you are playing, the more forgiving you are likely to be with the element of repetition. Even if you are not that kind of gamer though, we feel that you should still try Assassin’s Creed out at least once.

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