Quick Look: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

God damn I don't care about Naruto, but damn if this game doesn't look real cool.

I actually watched all of Naruto minus the filler over the past year or so after a friend who really digs it encouraged me to, and I'm happy to call myself a fan of it. I wouldn't call it smart or challenging, but behind all the absurdity and excessive melodrama lies a cast of genuinely endearing characters, some really fantastically choreographed action, and a plot that's just coherent enough to keep me invested.

As far as shonen anime goes I don't think I'd recommend it over something like Hunter x Hunter or… uhh… well I don't watch much shonen anime, but I'm glad I finally got around to watching Naruto and can understand what all the fuss is about.

Onto this game, the cutscenes are unfortunate, but once you get the fundamentals down, fights are fast-paced and visually spectacular. The combat system isn't particularly deep, but when playing it with friends that tends to mean people can pick it up quicker. There's a ton of issues with it: lack of content, the lacklustre story and adventure modes, and the lack of any major improvements over the earlier games, but I've still had a lot of fun with it.

(also this is the first time I've heard the english VA for Naruto and oh boy it sure is something)

I have to say this game actually has some pretty cool style to its presentation.

Edit: and then I kept watching the quick look. Bummer. Had a great start.

...

Man this makes me want an Asura's Wrath 2

Watching this makes me really glad I stopped watching/reading Naruto. Obviously the cut scenes are probably not 1 to 1 with the manga/anime but it is astonishing how that fight with the Ten Tails looks every bit as stupid as I thought it would be. The thing about battle shounen's is that most of them trade in the same idea: singular characters as WMDs. I think Naruto does it way too blatantly and I think the fact that a lot of the plot essentially revolves around turning child soldiers into the equivalent of artillery barrages or nukes is fucking dumb. They go so hard modeling the style after ninjas and yet they're not even ninjas in the historical sense, just really agile wizards and monks. I admit that the series certainly has a styyyyle but it's one that I started out liking and then grew to despise as it began to jump the shark. Thanks for the quick look guys. Vinny and Austin are the anime authority and some of Alex's reactions were priceless. I'm expecting to see more quick looks a full month after an anime game's release lol.

Rapping anime Hulk Hogan clearly should be the real protagonist of this.

Austin by the time the naked men showed up the Naruto boat had long since run aground.

Also watching this was like watching 3 people only watch the last 5 minutes of the Usual Suspects.

Also I would pay thousands of dollars for a RiffTrax style commentary track for all of Naruto from Gbeast

"He's taller... and his teeth are on backwards?"

and

[Neji dies] "Oh... Other Character..."

strong QL of the year contender

All the Asura's Wrath talk in the comments just makes me extremely sad they're still making these instead of something like Asura's Wrath. Perhaps I should just be thankful they actually got to make Asura's Wrath in the first place.

The dialogue in this game is god awful, holy shit.

Every day I sit in front of my bed praying they're remastering the complete version for PS4.

I had no idea what was going on but this was a very funny quick look. Now I want a video feature where Vinny Austin and Alex watch Anime together. "three men and a manga"

"Let's Jump in here, Shonen we?"

- Vinny

Doubtful, but if they released it w/ the Ending DLC for $20-30, that would be perfect.

Seriously, we need a series where they just have a running commentary on anime. I'd pay upwards of a dollar to watch that.

YEAH Let's do this! Oh wait... the dub...? ohhhh...

okay...

I have not watched Naruto since a super hot week-ish long period 8 or so (maybe longer) years ago when I watched 40 some episodes in a few days. This QL made me go watch hours of the rest of this game, and then read a synopsis on the ending of the series. Glad I did. It was an unproductive, but enjoyable experience. I feel like I would have been super into this if it started the same time DBZ did.

oh man i didnt realise there'd be big time naruto spoilers in this. I guess I shoulda been more careful...

ehhhh, i remember liking Naruto about 7 years ago, looks like that show really went to the gutter at some point.

Hmm.

I'VE BEEN CHILLIN ON THE SIDELINES

I read the manga to the end and the anime is approaching the end so I understood all the references. Having said that, Naruto pretty much did turn DBZ near the end with a little bit more characterization.

Bunch of weeaboos

Ohh Boy! Killed the Dual Shock with all that power!

Love their reaction to Killer Bee.

Man, I watched TFS play this. The last 40-50%~ of the game gets fucking insane and awesome. It basically goes full Asura's Wrath. Also they played it in like 3 non-English languages.

It bypasses the anime so it stops doing the crappy screenshots-with-voice-and-some-photoshop-effects thing for cutscenes and is much better.

Also, DYNAMIC ENTRY!

Edit: Also the comment that said they should do a FMA:B game, that would be amazing.

The first one was quite awful and I don't expect anything from this too

So I was never super into Naruto, and I watch plenty of anime, but the last storm gamer on PC and this one has actually gotten me a deep hole of the ridiculousness of the lore.

But honestly this is the best Storm game they've made, the story gets super cheesy, the animation stills are very much bullshit but there are still plenty of in game animated scenes that look so gorgeous. It really rounds out the entire series in a pretty nice way in my opinion. The fighting is so robust, and probably the tightest gameplay I've gotten from such a simple system that BEAST crew don't really have the sense to use in this video.

They probably aren't aware because the game forces you to experiment instead of actual tutorials. And I can see how that's frustrating. The multiplayer has also held up pretty well in the matches I've played.

Even having read the entire manga, the way they present the story in this game was still confusing to me, so I can't even imagine what people would think, that weren't familiar with the story. Such a mess. (Looks cool, though.)

Yup it cuts quite a bit for focus, and still manages to be convoluted, the only thing anime does better than the Storm games are also the same things that are probably considered some of the biggest flaws in adapting anime from manga; which is just how much time they spend explaining EVERY SINGLE PIECE of lore related material.

In this game they throw a shit load of lore references, characters, terms, and past events that happen in the anime but aren't shown in this game at all at a million miles a second; that if you don't have it fresh in your mind you'll get lost.

But once again I fell into a deep hole in an anime that came out when I was 12, I watched past the Chunin exams and then fell off it because of well, tons of new things in 2007 lol. It took until 2 years ago, and tons of objectively better anime in between, before I played the last Storm game which made me fall back in again.

Edit: And Alex makes the most apt comparison with Asura's Wrath, the QTE's are even better in a sense that it feels even less like a cutscene. These are honestly some of the best ones to me since the Shenmue games invented it :P

Eh, 2/3s of it is just prep for the good stuff...

Sorry, as a lifelong, '90s DBZ fan, I feel the need to inflict the pain I endured from people upon the next generation.