Review by: Mike Thompson

Review: When Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 came out for the PS3 and 360, it was a surprisingly fun licensed game that offered a lot of fun (even for those who aren't necessarily fans of the cartoons). As a result, expecting good things from Naruto Shippuden: Dragon Blade Chronicles on the Wii is understandable, but doing so will leave you disappointed. The latest Naruto title for consoles is an entirely different animal from last month's release, in nearly all the wrong ways.

The game presents an original story that takes place in the middle of the "Hunt for Itachi" plot arc. It's actually not that bad: a new character named Akari turns up in Naruto's village at the same time a number of "Mugonhei" (mud zombies, for lack of a better explanation) attack the town. It turns out Akari and her brother were shunned by society because they have horns on their heads, but Akari's brother is taking this way too personally and is trying to use the Five Elemental Dragons to destroy the world. Naturally, Naruto and his friends set off to foil his plans.

Ideally, Dragon Blade Chronicles is an action/adventure title, featuring hack-and-slash action mixed with a bit of platforming. Unfortunately, the combat is pretty shallow (there's only one attack button, another button activates an ally's unique move, and you can map four special abilities at a time to the directional pad), the enemies are uninspired, and the platforming is more frustrating than challenging.

Case in point: when you start the game, Naruto has apparently just finished some serious combat training. Of course, the training clearly wasn't important enough to even see, so what's the first thing you do when you start the game? You move boxes. For no apparent reason. Of course, you do have to make Naruto move boxes a little later on in order to jump over barricades, though this makes no sense since Naruto will literally run up a waterfall in the next level. Aside from these problems, it should also be noted that if you get too close to an edge, you'll sometimes fall through the ground to your death and then have to restart the mission.

There is a multiplayer mode, but it was clearly added as an afterthought. If you want to go toe-to-toe with a friend, the two of you can assume control of Naruto and Sasuke and fight against each other to your heart's content, but these are the only two characters you can play with and the combat is still mind-numbingly shallow.

Running around the linear game world plays second fiddle to watching the game's cutscenes. Seriously, there are a lot of them. In fact, don't be surprised when you spend 25 minutes of the first half just watching cutscenes that attempts explain the basic plot. Of course, you can skip all of this, if you should so desire, but if you do this you're left with no idea about what's going on. This isn't an exaggeration: if you watch all the cutscenes between the first two levels, your Wii Remote will disconnect due to a lack of activity.