I've had to watch my spending as of recent, but there was a time but months ago where I was heavy into manga. I'd buy $40 or $50 or more batches at one time. And what good manga loving otaku out there would you be if you didn't dabble and watch the anime too. Though I only have one manga volume to date, I have watched all the currently airing Naruto episodes on television, and find that I can't get enough. I'm apparently a sucker for the games too, because I always end up playing them, and though perhaps I shouldn't, I do indeed find myself having a good time.

There isn't really a story mode to this game, because the single player game (more on that in a bit) is made up of individual missions, with no cohesive story to tie them all together. With that said, the developers did include a lot of missions, which were taken straight from the manga and anime. You'll go against Kakashi with Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. You'll have to beat Gaara with Sasuke's chidori. You'll need to beat Temari with Shikamaru's shadow possession jutsu. And so on and so on. For the non-fans out there who doesn't know one character from the next, you'll think these are just normal fights, but fans will realize them for what they are and get a bit of kick out of playing these popular moments from the franchise.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
As mentioned, there is no typical story for the single player portion of the game, but rather the single player is composed of many different missions, with some familiar to fans, and some created for the game. Missions range from using a certain move, defeating a certain amount of enemies in a time limit, surviving, protecting someone, or simple battles where you have to deplete the opposing fighter's health down to nothing. All in total, you'll have 60+ missions to complete. Depending on difficulty and your skill level, you'll be looking at a few hours to complete it all.

Controls are pretty standard and simple to learn, as the D-pad moves you around, A-button jumps, B-button runs, Y attacks, X-button throws weapons you collect and throws enemies, right button blocks, and left button teleports behind the player. The general gist is you'll be hitting the Y-button a ton and blocking when necessary. You'll have to get better as you advance through the game and mix it up some, but mostly this is the whole combat experience.

A really nice thing is how the game captures the character specific techniques, and how you do many of the same movements with the stylus. As chakra stores up, once they highlight themselves, you'll be able to tap on the bottom screen to select a technique to use. Some of the techniques your character will have to run into the enemy for them to use it, while others all they need to do is have enough time to go through the using animation. Once either happens, you'll then have to perform a few simple techniques yourself, like spinning a chakra wheel in the direction it tells you, sliding your stylus up and down, tapping specific chakra flow points on a human body mockup, or even blowing into the microphone. Heck, for the summoning jutsus, you even have to do the hand signs (only tapping the right three character symbols), and then smear blood across the screen (of course, it's yellow in the game, but all Naruto fans know you summon by smearing blood). They all look like their manga and anime counterparts when they are carried out, and there is just something satisfying about blowing into your microphone, only to see Sasuke blow out some fire. But then again, perhaps you need to be an otaku loving Naruto nerd like yours truly to really dig it.

The levels are also pretty expansive considering the game style, as there are always multiple layers, where you'll be running across rooftops, telephone wires, floating islands, and cascading sand slides. All of that skipping and jumping around really feels like Naruto.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
You'll get to use all of your unlocked characters, and battle with up to a total of four players on one stage across different systems wirelessly using multi-card play. Once again, though, lack of Wi-Fi sucks. The three modes of multiplayer include Scroll Battle (collect scrolls off of other opponents and enemies you hit), Treasure Hunt (the first player to find their treasure wins), and Battle Royale (last player standing wins). The Battle Royale is the best of the bunch, but in general the multi isn't much. With simple combat consisting of mainly hitting one button, it just can't naturally be that deep.

GRAPHICS
Though simple and dated, the graphics do a terrific job of representing all the characters appropriately to the original source material. As long as you know the characters, you'll instantly be able to look at them and go, "Oh, that's so and so." The environments offer the same likeability factor, as they are created well, and have enough background animation and environmental hazards going on to be impressive.

SOUND
The music sounds good, as does the sound effects, though you'll be hearing the same grunt combos over and over. The really nice thing is that, though given a DS cartridge, they still managed to include a ton of audio samples from the voice actors, as they'll say the name of the techniques whenever you use one. I wasn’t expecting such commitment and didn't think so much sound could be crammed on the cartridge personally.

IN CONCLUSION
If it weren't a Naruto game, perhaps I wouldn't enjoy it so much. Perhaps I'd write it off as a generic brawler with repeating combos. But regardless, I still enjoyed it. Even when I was struggling trying to figure out how to kill 20 snakes in a certain time limit, I was still having fun. The regular player might not care about the game, but many a Naruto fan will equally find a fun time to be had, though short time it may be.

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