With Japan’s strict labour laws preventing mass layoffs, Bandai Namco is reported to be using “tradionally Japanese” methods to force employees to leave voluntarily. As per the report, this involves sending employees to “expulsion rooms”, or oidashi beya, where they are given nothing to do, and pressured to quickly find employment elsewhere, or else have their severance pay reduced due to their lack of productivity while in the expulsion room.

The report claims that Bandai Namco has sent roughly 200 employees to such rooms since April this year, of whom about 100 have left the company thus far, with more expected to follow in their footsteps in the months ahead.

That has come along with the cancellation of a number of projects. As per the report, several unannounced games have been cancelled, including those that featured the Naruto and One Piece IPs. A game that had been commissioned by Nintendo has also allegedly been shelved. In November last year, the Japanese company set up a new internal team that would be focused primarily on working on Nintendo-commissioned projects.

“Our decisions to discontinue games are based on comprehensive assessments of the situation. Some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before they are assigned their next project, but we do move forward with assignments as new projects emerge,” a Bandai Namco representative said. “There is no organization like an ‘oidashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.”

Bandai Namco recently announced that it would be discontinuing its failed MMORPG Blue Protocol, and that its planned Western release had also been cancelled.

Earlier this yar, the Japanese publisher confirmed that it had cancelled five unannounced titles after suffering impairment losses of 21 million yen due to an underperforming game. The game wasn’t explicitly mentioned, but was likely Blue Protocol.

The company has, however, also seen recent impressive success, with Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO having sold over 3 million units in its first 24 hours.

Each skin comes with its own variants and special items. Naruto gets the Seventh Hokage Style while Sakura receives the Sakura Uchicha Style and Kakashi gets the Black Ops Kakashi Style. Meanwhile, Sasuke has the Snake Sword Pickaxe. There’s also new Back Bling like Pakkun, the Demon Wind Shuriken, Hidden Leaf Cloak and Scroll. You can also get the Summoning Jutsu and Ramen Break emotes along with a glider that resembles Kurama, the nine-tailed fox.

Players can acquire the following items in these bundles:

• The Naruto & Kakashi Bundle: includes Naruto Uzumaki Outfit (with Seventh Hokage variant Style), Scroll Back Bling, Kakashi Hatake (with Black Ops Kakashi variant Style), Pakkun Back Bling, and the Pizza Eating Jutsu Loading Screen
• The Sasuke & Sakura Bundle: Includes Sasuke Uchiha (with the Sword of Kusanagi Pickaxe), Demon Wind Shuriken Back Bling, Snake Sword Pickaxe, Sakura Haruno (with Sakura Uchiha variant Style), Hidden Leaf Cloak Back Bling, and the Team 7 Loading Screen
• The Shinobi Gear Bundle: includes Ramen Break Emote, Summoning Jutsu Emote, Kunai Pickaxe, Black Ops Sword Pickaxe and Hidan’s Scythe Pickaxe

Of course, you’ll also meet Kakashi in the wild and undertake different missions to earn rewards and unlock new locations so that’s exciting. The Hidden Leaf Village will be available from November 16th, 10 AM ET to November 29th, 10 AM ET.

CyberConnect2 are the guys who have brought us the .hack games, as well as the Naruto fighters, in association with Bandai Namco. So yes, they may be a divisive game developer in terms of their reception, but they have a hardcore fan following. Enough of one to host their own event, actually.

They held one just recently- the “CC2 Summer Campaign 2014” talk event, where they revealed that they’re currently working on a major project.

This, of course, wouldn’t be the first time the developer has worked on original games, but unlike previous original releases, which were more like side hobby projects for them, this new release is, in their own words, supposed to be a ‘major new title.’

That is all that we know about it for now, though. As to what kind of a game it is, or what platform it is coming on, we have no clue or inkling whatsoever, although with TGS just around the corner, more information can’t be that far off.

And it did do justice to the source material: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 spends an almost inordinate amount of time building up context, weaving in and out of Naruto lore, and developing all of its characters, deliberating on every major story event that occurs. Fans of the series will find themselves in seventh heaven. Ultimate Storm 3 treats the series lore wonderfully well, recreating it with some well made cutscenes, and allowing players to play through some of the more momentous occasions in the story.

Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 thrives in how it delivers the illusion of story control to the player. Throughout the game, you are presented with alternate story paths to choose from, Legend or Hero, and your choice opens up alternate story paths, many of which will be new even to ardent series fans. The allure of differing story paths is probably enough to make many play through the game multiple times, lending it more replay value than it already would otherwise have.

That replay value comes, of course, from the online mode. The online mode from the previous games returns with Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, and it’s almost exactly as it was the last time around. You can select your character and duke it out in online battles, in ranked and unranked battles. There is no dearth of gameplay modes and characters, and the netcode itself works excellently well.

The actual fighting is a treat. Although not necessarily the deepest fighting games around, the Naruto Shippuden games are some of the best at making you feel like an absolute badass when it comes to the fighting, taking all the coolest of attacks and moves from the cartoon, and translating them all into the gameplay. Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 looks equally cool, and it remains deep enough to retain your interest, while also being accessible enough to remain inviting to newcomers to the genre or the games, who nonetheless might be interested because they’re fans of the anime.

The single player plays much the same way, but it mixes things up a little by introducing a new gameplay style called mob battles. Mob battles pit you against literal waves of enemies, and you have to take on them yourself. They’re actually fairly easy, even though they look sufficiently cool, and even get a bit dull. If they were overdone, they would detract from the pace and the flow, but as it stands, they’re used sparingly, and work just well enough to provide a bit of a change to the player.

Looking cool is something the game goes out of its way to do: apart from all the great animations and attacks, all of which look like they are right out of the cartoon, the game also manages to integrate some really cool moves into its gameplay. Certain times, the fights give way to some beautifully animated Quick Time Events, allowing you to finish off whoever you are fighting in style, and though the QTEs themselves are actually rather forgiving, they look cool. Again, if they were used more often, their shallowness would probably detract from the gameplay, but as it stands, they are used just enough that they provide a nice change of pace without actually taking away anything else from the game.

From the story, which does its best to appeal to series faithful, and even presents them with some great ‘what if’ scenarios via the branching paths that you are asked to choose from along the way, to the way it looks and sounds, to the dialog, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is incredibly faithful to the anime it derives its license from. Unlike most games based on an anime license, that are barely adequate, and sell just on the appeal of their license, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is a great game independently of its source material, and one that even non fans of the series will enjoy, if they don’t try to follow the story.

Faithful to its source, fun to play, fun to look at, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is a great game that does its license justice and is recommended to all fans of Naruto and the genre as well.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 3.

It just goes to show you how pre conceived notions can be completely off. Naruto: Powerful Shippuden fully embraces the quirky side of its source material to deliver a charming, whimsical, and fun take on the universe it is portraying, that provides for a refreshing change from routine. By embracing the inherent silliness of the anime that it is based on, Powerful Shippuden manages to transcend its source and become a fun game in its own right.

But for starters, a clarification may be needed about said source material. Though the game is called Naruto: Powerful Shippuden (possibly in a bid to maximize sales), the actual game is based on the Naruto spin off series Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals, which is a more comic take on the Naruto universe, exaggerating and emphasizing its characters and their silly antics, something that is reflected in its visual style as well (retained in this game). Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals puts Rock Lee front and center, and sure enough, in Naruto: Powerful Shippuden, we find that Naruto has to share the spotlight with Rock Lee, with each character getting roughly half the campaign to their credit.

The campaign itself is split into two, depending on what character you choose to play as. Naruto’s storyline seems to at least try to be faithful to the anime, generally acting as good complementary material for fans, but taking what might be interpreted as a few liberties nonetheless. On the flipside, Rock Lee’s portions are batshit insane, confronting the players with some entirely contrived, nonsensical, and over the top scenarios and situations; in emphasizing the ridiculous nature of scenarios starring Rock Lee, these portions probably end up being more faithful to their source material than Naruto’s sections are to their. At least in spirit, anyway.

Rock Lee’s sections are a blast to play through: the game develops a sense of self awareness, and there is so much awkward humor and meta commentary that they are bound to elicit a laugh even from the most jaded gamer. In general, this is perhaps why Rock Lee’s sections are so much stronger and simply more fun than Naruto’s: freed from the shackles of trying to be faithful to the source material to appease legions of fans, they can go wild with their dialog and scenarios, and just aim to simply be fun.

I say that it’s the humor that makes Rock Lee’s sections better, because the actual gameplay seems to be of a consistent quality across both halves of the campaign. This is in spite of the fact that the two characters deliver entirely different styles of gameplay, with Naruto’s focus on ninja techniques delivering a complete contrast from Rock Lee’s preferred style of close quarters combat. Both characters end up feeling sufficiently distinct, and while you may prefer one over the other based on your own style of gameplay, both sections of the campaign are equal as far as objective quality is concerned.

Naruto: Powerful Shippuden is almost certainly targeted at younger audiences, and this shows in its gameplay and mechanics. Unlike recent console Naruto games, which are highly complex fighters with a dedicated community, Powerful Shippuden is a side scrolling brawler with minor platforming and RPG elements thrown in. In what is probably the most daring step this game makes from a gameplay perspective, Naruto embraces a variation of the difficulty system that Kid Icarus: Uprising so ingeniously implemented last year, by allowing you to set certain conditions and parameters for yourself before you begin a stage, and yielding higher experience for your character if you meet said parameters.

It’s this kind of effort that separates Powerful Shippuden from the flood of anime licensed titles on the market right now: it’s not a cheap cash in, this is a well developed and well thought out game that would have stood strong on its own. The core gameplay in the game is so sound and so much fun for a simple brawler, that you can’t help but like it. Add to that the oodles of charm that the game has, in everything that it does, from its exaggerated visual style to its over the top scenarios, from its dialog and humor to the music and sound effects, and you’re just left with a game that stands as a highly competent brawler on its own merits.

Indeed, that is perhaps the highest praise I can give Powerful Shippuden: even if you don’t like Naruto, or anime in general, you will probably find this game to be a fun outing. If you like Naruto, then your mileage with the game might actually vary based on what your opinion is on how it treats its source material.

But look past the anime trappings, and look at the license just as an excuse to justify the fun brawling that this game enables. In a year when the 3DS has had no dearth of great games, Powerful Shippuden unexpectedly adds another item to the growing list.

This game was reviewed on Nintendo 3DS.

Thousand Pounds Action Company’s fan film looks pretty amazing and they have uploaded the entire thing in YouTube. The original Naruto fan film was incredibly popular generating millions of views, and its sequel which you can check below, has reached a million views too.

Plot: The story takes place after the Pain saga, with Naruto becoming the acknowledged village hero he’s always sought out to be. Seeing Naruto grow steps closer to his dream, Rock lee decides he, too, must continue to grow and push his training even harder.

Feeling unfulfilled in his regimen, Lee decides to challenge Naruto to a no holds barred duel in hopes to reignite his passion to become the best ninja he can be. Naruto accepts the challenge from his close friend, and with this, the fight is set!

They have also started a Kickstarter project for Clandestine: Follow The Path which is a web series with $75,000 goal.

“The story in Clandestine is big and supernatural but personal in its telling.  That is what’s going to make it powerful,” reads the page. “Even more so since the main character, our heroine Adelene, only discovers who she is as the series begins.  Completely unbeknownst to her is her role as the matriarch of one of five ancient clans with unworldly powers fighting for control of the physical world.”

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

[Kickstarter]

Naruto video game franchises have shipped 10 million copies worldwide, Namco Bandai games announced.

On this occasion,  president of CyberConnect2, Hiroshi Matsuyama, will run all 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195km) of the Marathon de Paris in France dressed as NARUTO on April 15th, 2012.

“We’re very glad and proud to have achieved 10 million units worldwide for the Naruto franchise, and we promise you that we will keep working very hard on this important series to carry on exciting all the fans around the world. Thanks again for all of your support, and I wish you all the best for 2012!” said Yusuke Sasaki, Producer at Namco Bandai.