Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 (Wii)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.5 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Joe Dodson
• Reviewed on: 11/14/2008
• Released on: 10/21/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 (Wii) Review

Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 has a telling title. For instance, nearly every part is a piece of the series' history. It began as Naruto: Clash of Ninja on the GameCube. When it moved to the Wii, it gained the "Revolution." And now, the sequel is Clash of Ninja Revolution 2. You can also tell a lot about the way the games themselves have progressed; instead of revamping, developer Tomy has been adding on to the unchanged core of the game for the last four years. The result is as big and disorganized as its title. The only missing piece, both in game and in name, is the word "Online." Online features might have made a good game great, but as it stands, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 is ready to rumble in your living room.

The most significant mode is the story campaign, which takes place outside of the Naruto canon, and tells the story of an evil ex-ANBU member (ANBU being the ninja FBI) who wants to destroy the Hidden Leaf Village by turning its inhabitants against each other. Although this predictably allows the game to set up confrontations that wouldn't normally occur, the tale is more than just a pretext for battle. It's an actual story complete with colorful villains, crazy schemes, and old rivalries.

And the campaign is a real-deal campaign, not just 10 fights in a row. You'll fight your fair share of straight one-on-one matches, but you'll also find yourself up against 15 ninjas in a row, or battling two ANBU agents at once as a bad guy. In one particularly memorable fight, Naruto, Rock Lee, and Sakura must fight a brainwashed Might Guy, and you can defeat him only by finishing him off with Lee's special move. The thing is, Guy is all amped up and loco; his attacks are devastating, and your special move removes only a sliver of his life. So the challenge isn't just kicking his butt, but figuring out how to keep your teammates alive long enough to whittle down his health, and then setting him up for a special attack at just the right time. You aren't just winning a fight; you're solving a problem.

There are three problems with the campaign. First, the cutscenes are terrible. Much of the plot is conveyed through slowly scrolling text, and several conversations are between paper cutouts of the characters who bounce up and down when they talk. Second, the AI is easy to exploit. Certain characters such as Kakashi and Jiraiya have special moves that the computer never figures out, such as Jiraiya's "Now I'm Covered in Spikes-Jutsu!" This makes several fights in the campaign super easy. Third, the tutorial content is all contained within a separate mode, so if you begin the campaign straight away, you'll get your butt kicked while you figure out how the controls work. None of these are big problems (the story is still interesting, the game compensates for the weak AI, and the external tutorial mode is great); they just keep a decent campaign from being really good.

The core strength of the Clash of Ninja games has always been its fighting engine, and it's as strong as ever in Clash of Ninja Revolution 2. The game is a 3D fighter that takes place mostly on a 2D plane, like with Tekken. Though there are about a half-dozen control permutations that cover everything from the GameCube controller to just a remote, the default mode has you move with the Nunchuk and attack by wiggling the remote. You can also execute four special moves by pressing a direction on the Nunchuk plus the A button, throw kunai by pressing A alone, and execute super moves by pressing down on the remote's D pad. The basics are very easy to pick up.

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