I’ve never played any of the 50 bazillion other Naruto games, but I’m a ridiculously huge fan of the manga and anime, so my fellow reviewers graciously gave me the opportunity to review Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Council 4. And, even more graciously, the vendor at E3 who was demoing the game actually gave me a copy to take home and keep! Everyone bow to the almighty Tomy Games.

For those who follow the manga/anime, Ninja Council 4 starts right at the beginning of the Shippuden story arc, when Naruto returns to Konoha after training with Jiraiya for two and a half years. You go around meeting with people again and going on missions up to the point in the story when Naruto and Sasuke finally stumble upon each other.

Though in your very first fight you can only play as Naruto, I was surprised to find that the rest of the game lets you play as any of the opened characters. You start with five: Naruto, Sakura, Rock Lee, Kakashi and Neji. As the story progresses, though, you can unlock a maximum of 17. Of course, every character has his or her own special abilities, like Naruto’s Uzumaki Barrage and Toad Summons, or Sakura’s super strength and chakra healing. The one bad thing about these abilities was the rather sexist (in my opinion) way they were named. All of the male characters had badass sounding abilities while Sakura was stuck with things named Chaaa! (think karate yell) and Girl Power. Considering how incredible Sakura has become in Shippuden, it’s almost shameful that she isn’t being taken seriously in this game.

As for gameplay, everything but dialogue between characters takes place in your typical side-scroll world. Whichever character you decide to play as has to make his or her way through village streets, forests, deserts and the like while fighting enemies and collecting weapons and gold leaf symbols. The enemies keep reappearing in the same spot over and over again, but you don’t use your number of kills to level up, so don’t bother hunkering down in one spot.

The plot directly follows the manga, which means that it is spectacular. Still, it’s rather hard to extract just how awesome this plot is from the disjointed fights and pixilated graphics. If you’re a young kid or you only watch the show on Cartoon Network, this is probably just fine for you. However, if you’re used to the high-quality, Japanese voice actors or love the show for its beautiful fight scenes, you’re probably going to be disappointed with Ninja Council 4.

Really, though, it’s only because of the platform the game is on. If this had come out on a high-quality graphics system like PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, I think I’d be all over it. I mean, come on: getting to play as Kakashi and watch him jump around and be all ninja like? Totally my kind of game!