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Before we start, let’s talk about this Anime/Magna sensation called Naruto. Naruto is about a hyperactive orange track suit wearing ninja named Naruto Uzumaki, who dreams of becoming Hokage of his village someday. However, it turns out that inside him is the legendary Nine-tailed fox demon, which causes many people to fear Naruto. Throughout this anime, Naruto will experience friendship, honor, betrayal, and love. Oh yeah, he says “Believe it!”, which annoys a lot of people (including me), as his catch line in the English version.

As you may know, Naruto games are very common these days. What isn’t common about this year’s Naruto games is that there’s a Naruto game coming out for the PS3 (Naruto; Ultimate Ninja Storm) and one for the X-Box 360(Naruto; Broken Bond). In other words, bitter console rival, ahoy!So, you might be asking yourself, “What’s the difference?”. Today, I’ll shine some light on the issue.

Story- Slight difference between the two games. Let’s talk about Broken Bond’s story. Broken Bond is actually a sequel to Naruto; Rise Of A Ninja released a year ago. Broken Bond will pick up where Rise of a Ninja left off and will contain the Return of Itachi and Sasuke Retrieval story arcs. However, Ultimate Ninja Storm story will start right at the beginning of the anime, which means it will cover the story arcs starting from the Exposition to Sasuke Retrieval (that’s a total of 135 episodes!). As you can read, both games will end at the same story arc.

Graphics- Not really that different. Both games will feature cel-shaded graphics. If you’re not familiar with cel shaded graphics, here’s a brief definition; cel-shaded graphics is a graphic style which 3d objects appears hand drawn. The name comes from the clear sheets of acetate, called cels, that are painted on for use in traditional 2D animation, such as Disney classics. Famous games that used cel-shaded graphics includes The Legend of Zelda; The Wind Waker and Okami. Both game uses the cel-shaded graphicc style to replicate that look and feel of the anime. However, it looks like Ultimate Ninja Storm graphics are much crisper and high res than Broken Bond.

Gameplay; Broken Bond- If there’s one category that both games are extremely different in, then it would be the gameplay category. Let’s talk about the gameplay in Broken Bond. Broken Bond. Like Rise of the Ninja; Broken Bond gameplay is story/RPG based. Unlike the first game, players will take up to three ninja at a time to follow them around and perform certain tasks. Specific characters now have powers that contribute to these tasks, such as Neji’s Byakugan to find enemy traps or Naruto’s Shadow Clones to get across a small valley. In addition, during a battle in story mode, in the middle of a battle, your character can be switched out with someone else from the team. Also, the game will feature an online multiplayer mode. You can choose among 25 characters and play alongside friends and defeat other teams online via Xbox LIVE. There’s even an online tournament mode!

Gameplay; Ultimate Ninja Storm- Unlike Broken Bond, Ultimate Ninja Storm focus will be one solo fight after fight. In fact, Ultimate Ninja Storm is actually a successor to the Naruto; Ultimate Ninja series released for the PS2. Ultimate Ninja will have context based mini games like in God of War or Kingdom Hearts 2. Also in Ultimate Ninja, there’s a new feature called “Awakening Mode”. While similar to the transformations of the previous Ultimate Ninja titles, this mode can only be activated when a character has less than 1 health meter remaining. The moment a characters’ health drops below approximately 1 bar the chakra meter receives an “Awakening Lamp”. Building a characters chakra to MAX and continuing to build chakra will light the lamp and enable Awakening Mode, making the character significantly more powerful with a new/extended move list and look (ex. “One Tailed Naruto Mode”) or merely raise their parameters / grant new abilities (ex. Kakashi’s “Sharingan Mode” auto substitution). Sadly, Ultimate Ninja Storm will not have an online multiplayer like Broken Bond, but it will have downloadable content available to make up for it.

What version should you go with?- Go with what ever one is on your system; there’s not much of a difference between them. However, I’m looking forward to the Ultimate Ninja Storm since the game looks like it will feature a lot more action than Broken Bond.

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