Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact (PSP)

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact is a 3rd person crowd-brawling game for the PSP, following Kizuna Drive and Akatsuki Rising. The main difference between Ultimate Ninja Impact and its predecessors, besides tweaks under the hood and roster updates, is the use of cel-shading in order to provide anime-like visuals.

For the uninitiated, 3rd person crowd-brawling games give you a character, an expansive stage to run around in, and waves upon waves of enemies that you have to wipe out. Sometimes you also get a boss fight at the end. If you’ve ever played any of Tecmo Koei’s –Warriors series of games, then you know what crowd brawler game is like. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact is basically like that – Dynasty Warriors with Naruto Shippuden themes.

The bad things first, because they’re few and far in between: the game is lengthy and takes you from the rescue Gaara arc all the way to the Ninja summit, but once you’ve finished the story mode, the extra missions won’t be that appealing.

There is a tendency for the combat itself to be repetitive, but this is more a flaw of the genre than the game. I mean, crowd brawlers by design will have you fighting tons of cannon fodder over and over again; complaining about it is like complaining that water is too wet. Lastly, the extra modes, as mentioned, isn’t that different from the story mode so there’s very little incentive to take them on once you’ve had your fill of the main game. It would have been better if they included a 1 on 1 vs mode against the CPU.

Now we get to the good parts:

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 (PSP)

At first glance, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 looks like it’s a significant upgrade to its predecessors, Ultimate Ninja Heroes and Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2. The graphics and presentation look sleeker, it’s got an updated roster, and it finally has 4-way free for alls. Unfortunately, all of the improvements are superficial at best, and once you actually get around to playing the game, you’ll get the feeling that Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 is a step backwards for the franchise.

The character models in UNH 3 is indeed smoother and there’s less jaggies noticeable, but the character animation is jerky, like it was made with less frames. Most PSP games run at 30fps, but UNH 3 looks jerky even when compared to other PSP games (worse still is the fact that its predecessors ran at 60fps). We’re assuming that similar to the latter Bleach Heat the Soul games, the FPS was cut down in order to accommodate more complex visual effects. Except that’s not the case here.

UNH 3 seems to have skimped down on the use of transparencies and FBO effects, resulting in some effects – particularly Kakashi Hatake’s Mangekyo Sharingan super – looking a little bit rough around the edges.

But gameplay is still king, right?