When things begin to come together – and the Story mode does a pretty good job of ensuring that they will – you slowly come to understand the controls and mechanics, while victory becomes a whole lot easier. You can easily spend your first few battles getting ass-whipped without knowing what on Earth just went wrong. Quick attacks have a part to play, but this is really about maintaining awareness, well-timed blocks and counters, moves that shift you quickly into position and charged and combo moves that dish out huge amounts of damage. For another, Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 doesn’t play out like any conventional fighting game. For one thing, the combat takes place in full 3D arenas from a range of anchored camera angles, so it takes a while just to orient yourself to that. The cut-scenes alone can be bewildering, but the real shocks start when a fight kicks off. Depending on the chapter, you’ll possibly spend more time watching than actually playing. Win that chapter’s fights and you’re rewarded with more cut-scenes before the next chapter opens up. What this really comes down to for each chapter is watching several minutes of lengthy anime or still frame cut-scenes, all nicely scored and voiced, interrupted by fights or the occasional quicktime event. The first and most important, Story, follows the events of the series through a string of battles, following one or more characters along branching, sometimes parallel, storylines. Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 – rather bringing into question how ‘ultimate’ Ultimate Ninja Storm 1, 2 and 3 were – splits the action up into three main game modes. If you are, then sit yourself down and enjoy the feast. Basically, if you’re not a fan of the teen soap meets apocalyptic ninja wars series, don’t apply. If you aren’t, you’ll find it inaccessible, baffling and occasionally tedious. If you are a fan of Naruto and the Naruto Shippuden series in particular, then it’s hard to imagine a game going further to bring you the storylines, ninja battles, heroes, villains and migraine-inducing bombast of the anime. Well, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 makes that question absolutely crucial. With most, however, you need to be a fan to make splashing out worthwhile. Are you a fan? How big a fan are you? Sure, some tie-ins are so wretched that even hardcore fans shouldn’t bother, while a few – like RockSteady’s Arkham games or the Starbreeze Riddick titles – are so good that it really doesn’t matter. Given a certain level of quality, the value of any licensed tie-in game comes down to the same questions. Available on Xbox One, PS4 (version tested)

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