E3 '07: Naruto: Rise of a Ninja Hands-On

We got our first look at Naruto: Rise of a Ninja in a fully guided tour that Ubisoft gave us at its Ubidays event back in May, and today we got a chance to see more of the single-player experience, as well as get our first hands-on time with the one-on-one versus mode in Ubisoft Montreal's anime-inspired ninja action game.

Our demo consisted of three distinct parts, starting off with a ramen delivery side-mission from the single-player game. In this, we watched as Naruto made his way to Teuchi's ramen shop in Konoha, a location that should be well known to fans of the anime and manga series that Rise of a Ninja is based on. Here, Naruto had the option of either buying some ramen for himself, or taking on a delivery mission for Teuchi. Our tour guide opted for the latter, which saw Naruto strapping on a steaming backpack full of ramen and trying to reach specific customers in Konoha. An arrow at the top of the screen made it easier for Naruto to locate his customers, as did the glowing green aura that surrounded the customers when they were in sight. While the first two customers were found on the street level, Naruto had to use some of his ninja agility to leap up to a second level to find the last stop.

As we saw in our previous look at Rise of a Ninja, the people of Konoha had different emoticons over their heads to indicate their current opinion of Naruto, and his ramen customers were no different. However, when he successfully delivered ramen to a customer who had a low opinion of Naruto, the emoticon switched from angry to happy, and we're told that a friendly villager will be able to provide Naruto with assistance further on in the game. While we only got to see a small section of Konoha in our first look at the game, the version we were shown today was a full eight times larger, and we definitely got the sense that this was a fully realized ninja village. Though there won't be any artificial barriers to keep Naruto from exploring the village right from the start, there will be plenty of areas that he'll need to learn new ninja abilities in order to reach, which will help make the exploration of Konoha feel more organic.

A few of these ninja abilities were showcased in the second part of our demo, which featured a waterfall race mission given to Naruto by his ninja sensei, Kakashi. In the wooded wilderness outside of Konoha, Kakashi challenged Naruto to make his way as fast as he could up a path that intersected a raging river several times, as well as a waterfall. Here we saw Naruto use his sprint ability, which gave him significantly increased speed, but made turns a little touchy, and on a few occasions our tour guide ended up plunging into the nice-looking water as he attempted to negotiate a series of rafts that floated on top of it. Additionally, Naruto had to be mindful of traps that were strung across his path, and at one point he encountered a bandit, causing the game cut away to a small arena for a quick one-on-one fight. Another one of Naruto's abilities (or "jutsu" as they're called in the game) allowed him to walk on water, which he had to activate at another point further on in the race. After negotiating a few rocky ledges that jutted out from a misty waterfall, Naruto reached the end of his race, where he was greeted by his sensei Kakashi, as well as his teammates Sakura and Sasuke. Keeping with their personalities, Kakashi congratulated Naruto for a job well done, while Sasuke chided him for taking too long, and Sakura swooned over Sasuke.

After watching someone else at the controls of all this slick-looking ninja action, we were itching to pick up a controller ourselves, which we got to do in the third and final part of our demo. Here we got our first look at the game's two-player mode. While the single-player adventure in Rise of a Ninja will have you playing exclusively as Naruto, the two-player mode will let you square off with a number of familiar Naruto characters. While our challenger picked Kakashi, we couldn't help but stick with Naruto himself, as we were curious to see how some of his recognizable abilities would come into play in a fight. Most of the action was pretty easy to pick up, as the core of the fighting mechanics here were pretty standard for a basic 3D fighter. There were two basic attacks, which we could modify by holding the left analog stick in different directions, and they could be easily chained together into multi-hit combos. Characters could also leap into the air, perform throw attacks, and block incoming attacks, and we found that if we blocked an incoming attack at just the right time, we would appear on the other side of our enemy, with a log taking up our previous location.

The basic hand-to-hand combat looked good, with dramatic pauses whenever a hit landed to give the action greater impact, but the two most interesting facets of the fighting system in Rise of a Ninja that we saw were the characer-specific jutsu and the rage attacks. The rage attack acted as a sort of odds-evener for a player that had taken a beating. Every time a character took a hit, a small spiral meter would fill up a little. When it reached its max, that player could activate the rage meter, providing them with a limited amount of invulnerability.

By holding down the left trigger, a character would go into a jutsu stance, where they could then activate a special attack by gesturing with both analog sticks. By performing the right gesture, a circular meter with three concentric, radial bars would appear. As the circle grew, it would intersect with these bars, and by letting go of the analog sticks at that moment, the special attack would initiate. Though the different bars don't effect the nature of the attack, they do effect their power, so the strategy is all about how long you can hold your position before being interrupted by an incoming attack.

We were able to see two of Naruto's jutsus, both of which should be well known to fans. There's the sexy jutsu, which will disorient your opponent and actually mix up their controls for a few moments, and then there's the replication jutsu, which required additional input for us to pull off correctly. As the attack began, we were prompted to input four button presses. As it progressed, the buttons we had previously inputted flashed on screen, and our challenge was to press that button again before our opponent did. If we beat them to the punch, the attack would continue; if they got a button press in before us, it would cancel out the attack. We also got to see a lightning-based attack from Kakashi, where both players had to mash wildly on the A button as they attempted to overpower each other. These jutsu attacks proved potent, and during one of our fights we were able to completely wipe out our opponent with little more than Naruto's replication jutsu.

While our three-part demo of Naruto: Rise of a Ninja gave us a good look at the sheer variety of action that the game will feature, it also left us eager to see more. If you're anything like us, be sure to check out GameSpot's live stage show during E3 2007, where we're scheduled to take another look at this exciting new game from Ubisoft Montreal.