Naruto: Ninja Destiny ( DS )

Metachronos overall score = 6.2 / 10

Positive
- Many characters to unlock
- Opponents put up a challange, on the hardest difficulty only
- Teleporting is kinda cool

Negative
- Uninteresting, repetitive story
- Mindless combat
- Very easy most of the matches
- As the Uzumaki Chronicles series, many things from the japanese version are missing

The Ninja Destiny story covers the plot of about 100 episodes with a minimum of effort. The stage is set by a wall of text explaining that the final round of the chunin exams are about to begin, and everything afterward is revealed as bad text dialog between unmoving portraits of the characters. Not only is this a sad and anemic approach to telling one of the most beloved stories in manga history, but it also contains a lot of spoilers. You've probably already seen the first 100 episodes if you're reading this review, but if you haven't, this game may be the worst possible way to find out what happens.

The graphics aren't terrible. The 3D models animate smoothly and even benefit from some stylish shading, but they aren't very detailed, either. The backgrounds are also pretty bare. One level takes place on a completely featureless grass lawn, with a couple of brown hills in the background. The dirty, garbled music is fortunately very easy to fix by yourself: simply turn down the volume. Why the game even includes a block button is a mystery when you can just as easily teleport. Of course, teleporting costs chakra, but its debit is repaid with one landed punch. If you land four or five in a row, you'll build up enough chakra for a special jutsu, which in some cases can knock off more than half of an opponent's life. These, by the way, are not interactive.

We've seen that Naruto: Ninja Destiny resembles a shadow clone with its lack of staying power, and we've talked about how, like the sexy jutsu, it is thin and bare. On the default difficulty, you can literally play it without looking, but the harder difficulty provides a better challenge. Most ninjas would likely be looking for something more in their destiny than this game has to offer, but it beats getting assassinated while you sleep.

COVER + UK = http://www.tothegame.com/boxshot.asp?picnum=uk&id=7564
US = http://www.tothegame.com/boxshot.asp?picnum=us&id=7564

Sorry, didn't find one screenshot right of this game.