Naruto Games - Naruto: Ninja Council 3

Naruto Games - Naruto: Ninja Council 3

In this world there are two types of Naruto games -- good ones like Naruto: Ultimate Ninja and Naruto: Clash of Ninja -- and then there are the others. Ninja Council 3 falls in the latter category. A clear-cut exercise in anime franchise license-milking, NC3 offers rudimentary minigames as sole sustenance for hungry Naruto-starved gamers. A meager two modes define the game: Mission mode and Party mode.

In the single-player Mission Bingo Panel, assorted missions are plucked from the 49 unchecked boxes -- missions with meaningless, context-free exercises like "Foot Race! Get to the checkpoint before Sakura!" Anyone with even a glancing familiarity with the anime/manga series will find little inspiration or enjoyment from struggling to find some inconveniently placed goal while a fiendishly annoying Sakura hits you en route to your destination. Gamers experiencing missions like "The Catcher! Break objects and find the dog!" will likely end up with their eyes glazed over as this minigame war of attrition forces you to continually smash open pots until said "random" dog appears. The lack of care imbued in NC3 extends to the lazy localization found in missions like "Gather Medicine!" which implores you to "Gather 10 medicine!" Other complex tasks (note: sarcasm), like breaking 20 rocks or defeating 30 wolves, are often made quite unfair, with cheap collision detection, zero invincibility given to fallen players, and other glitchy gameplay ailments stacked against the player. The various Chi attacks offered to presumably balance such shortcomings are usually rendered ineffective by the aforementioned issues as well as poor input response and the lack of autotracking (you're usually facing the wrong way when you launch a special attack).