Ninjas are making a comeback these days. 80's relics like Ninja Gaiden, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and even Europe's epic song "Ninja" have all gotten some airtime due to the resurgence of the fad. Of course, while North America fell in and out of love with the ninja ways, Japan never did--leading to the extremeply popular new import, Naruto.

Now, if you aren't familiar with Naruto, it's not all that deep to depict. Imagine every other fight anime (Dragonball Z) and toss it into a junior high ninja theme. The whole setup is pretty solid, even though the anime is loaded with filler between the amazing fight sequences.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, then, is a fan's dream come true. All the fighting action of the first major arc of the series, and none of the narcolepsy-inducing fillers or flashbacks.

While the game does present some awesome fight scenes, such is also the main weakness of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja--it's more focused on the cool factor and flash than actual fighting mechanics. Fights come down to who can exploit an opening to hit the minute-long supers than who the better fighter is.

To back up a few steps, the game has a three main types of attacks: regular attacks, special attacks, and super attacks. Most of the moveset is populated by canned regular attack combos that don't do any rational amount of damage.

Each character then has two special attacks, either activated by hitting a specified direction twice and then attack, or leading in with three attacks and finally a direction and an attack. Either way, the results vary from the extremely effective Zabuza's offensive specialties to Haku's parry-based specials. As they're not all that reliable and take up a bar of the special bar, they're not used all that much.

Finally, we come to the super attacks. Taking either one, two, or three special bars, the super attacks are essentially minute-long cutscenes that take around a quarter to a third of an opponent's life bar. To perform one, all that is required is a full super bar, an appropriate amount of charge-ups, and a single attack. Of course, once an opponent sees a charge-up happen, it telegraphs the move. A single pattern breaks the game in this respect, however, as one of the item pickups scattered around stages is the ability to throw a multi-hit item. If an opponent is hit with one on the way down from a jump, blocking is disabled. This leaves the antagonist fully open for the singular hit that launches the super attack.

Specials and super attacks are beautifully framed, with the original manga pages in mind. Combining flashy presentation, the near perfect in-game renditions of the characters, and careful planning of camera angles and lighting, CyberConnect2 displays great amounts of effort in setting up scenes that will make fans gush. Of course, as stated above, the fighting mechanics are lacking. It would have been nice to see the same level of effort put to both the presentation and gameplay.

That isn't to say the game is bad. Where Naruto may take an angle of style over substance for this outing, it's perfectly fine for some pickup games between the younger set that watches the show and will inevitably grab Ultimate Ninja. The multiplayer is a little hampered though, given that the GameCube's Naruto series has four player whilst the Playstation 2 only supports two. The ability to run up to four characters in a match would help the game greatly, but after taking a look ahead via the already released sequels...well, that's not going to come.

One interesting idea that Naruto: Ultimate Ninja presents is a multi-tiered level setup. While the game has a 2D planar approach to fighting, there are multiple 2D planes on the playing field. Jumping back and forth between the planes to avoid attacks and grab items, making learning the quasi-3D system essential. It's a little rough, but is preferable to having a fully 3D game, which would most likely fully wreck the fighting system.

If you're looking to fulfill a Naruto fix and have a PS2, it's hard not to recommend Naruto: Ultimate Ninja. The gameplay and style will feel familiar to anyone who's picked up a Dragonball Z Budokai game, but to everyone else it most likely won't cut muster.