Naruto Rise of a Ninja

Naruto game for the Xbox360, not made by a Japanese company! It's made by Ubisoft. As expected, it comes as English dub out of the box. However, amazingly Ubisoft offers Japanese voice download via Xbox marketplace. The first thing I did after I booted up the game is to download the Japanese voice and switched to it. Ahh, no cheesy "localized" dialogues.

The game is part GTA, part platformer, part 2D fighter. The game is not easy either, especially the platforming and fighting part. Graphic is nice cel-shaded. Alas, it's buggy. It's my first 360 game that actually crashed. Background music frequently stutters, especially when exitting shops. Voices are sometimes delayed, or even not played at all, especially during cutscenes. Hopefully Ubisoft can patch things up.

Kudos for Ubisoft to actually put out the Japanese voice. The only thing missing is the Japanese music. I'm tired of US version of games from Japan/based on Japanese material that are dubbed (censored) with the excuse of localization (yeah, I mean you Square Enix, you and FF-X, X-2, etc). Dubbing and localization cost money, delay game release dates, is simply annoying. It seems things are changing with games like .Hack, Onimusha (1 and 4), Enchanted Arms, Blue Dragon, Gundam Musou, etc, and now this, that include/offer option for Japanese voice. Hopefully this trend will continue (yeah Koei, do this favor for your Dynasty Warrior series).