If anime is anything to go by, life for some kids is pretty damn awful. Born with the spirit of an evil nine-tailed fox inside him and left orphaned on the mean streets to fend for himself against a town who hates him, young Naruto doesn't exactly have a charmed life. But he's a kid with a dream: to become an elite ninja and earn the respect of his home town no matter what obstacles are in his path, or how nasty the townsfolk are to him. And with a little bit of hard work and perseverance, turning their frowns upside down and sharing the love is exactly what you'll do in Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, one kung-fu chop at a time.

Like its protagonist, on paper Rise of a Ninja has everything stacked against it. Constructing a solid game based on anime is hard enough as it is, but trying to make a sandbox-style action/adventure game with a robust fighting system is an even bigger challenge. Yet somehow, Naruto comes together to be one part Grand Theft Auto and one part Street Fighter with a healthy mix of platforming. And it does all of this while being a pretty faithful tie-in to the popular Japanese TV series that should have fans pretty pleased. All in all, Rise of a Ninja is one of those rare games that can appear out of nowhere and deliver a swift kick to your expectations.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Naruto is a popular Japanese cartoon that has successfully spun off into movies, manga and more. The game begins with young Naruto failing his first exam for the ninja academy, not long after he got busted for defacing statues in his village. Literally everybody in town hates him, except for his sensei, who takes Naruto under his wing as a student. With that one tiny foothold, it's up to you to bring the townsfolk around, a task that will require retrieving many lost objects, taking part in a slew of footraces, collecting various coins, battling ancient evils and of course, delivering piping hot noodles to the hungry citizens of the Leaf Village.

For those in the Naruto know, Rise of a Ninja takes place during chapters 1 to 138, starting with the introduction and going right through to the invasion of Konoha. There's heaps of footage from the anime spliced into the main story mode, and with 80 episodes to distil into the eight-hour campaign, there's quite a lot of action to be had – and probably a bit too much for Naruto-newbies to absorb. The amount of characters who literally pop up out of nowhere is pretty overwhelming if you've never seen the show, but thankfully it isn't really necessary to know each and every person – you'll either end up fighting them, or you won't.

And let's be clear about one thing: you *will* be fighting the vast majority of them. You've probably gotten the gist by now that Naruto isn't exactly well liked in his community, and when the poor bugger tries to better himself he incurs even more wrath from other budding ninjas. Not only that, his sensei and the Hokage (basically the village elders) are constantly sending the kid on missions he's in no way equipped to handle, so he will be battling bandits and renegade ninjas too. Combat is the core element of Rise of a Ninja, so it's just as well it kicks some major ass.

If Naruto: Rise of a Ninja was just a fighting game, it'd be a damn good one. The combat is incredibly satisfying; it looks great, the animations and combos are fluid, and the controls are rock solid. X and Y are attacks, both of which can be modified by the directionality of the left thumbstick when you attack. You can string together normal combos or ones that end in a killer combo – a move that does a stack of damage but is pretty difficult to pull off. The added advantages of these combos is that they can clear a bit of room between you and your opponent, which frees you up to unleash one of a unique set of attacks called a Jutsu. Squeeze the left trigger and then input two sets of directional inputs – like down, down and left, right – and you will perform a special move that can instantly turn the tide of battle. Naruto can call down Shadow Clone jutsu, for example, which creates between two and eight duplicates of himself who can find the enemy's weakspot for massive damage.

These jutsu moves are not just limited to combat though, they also play a really big role in Naruto's day-to-day adventuring. The Concentration Chakra is one of the abilities he'll use, which allows him to walk up walls or run on water. Each jutsu has three charge levels, and during combat working out which level to reach for before your opponent recovers enough to attack adds another level of strategy to the melee manoeuvring. When you're running around leaf village you'll have plenty of time to unleash the maximum level of jutsu, which affects how high you can run up vertical surfaces, how far you can walk on water, or how many scantily clad women you can turn into when you unleash your Sexy Jutsu. No, you didn't read that wrong.

One of the many activities in town is curing lovesick villages of their broken hearts by turning into one or more half naked women to wake them up. This pastime is a little bit odd, but there's plenty of other things to do: delivering noodles, playing hide'n'seek, racing in ninja challenges and collecting lots of rare coins. And winning over friends isn't the only reason you've got for doing all these good deeds; everything you do also helps Naruto enhance his ninja skills. Health and Chakra increase, and you can earn cash as well. Cash and coins can be spent on a bunch of goodies like increased inventory or magical scrolls that act as passive skill bonuses to assist you in battle.

Naruto's journey from social pariah to hero of the Leaf Village makes for an enjoyable 6-8 hour campaign, depending on how into collecting goodies you are. All in all, Naruto is a surprisingly deep game on a number of levels; there's a large sandbox world to explore with heaps of collectibles and challenges, and the fighting simulation is robust enough to stand on its own – which it does. Outside of the story mode you can play versus combat or take part in a tournament, the latter of which is pretty poorly implemented but is still a bit of fun. It's a great way to experiment with the other characters besides Naruto, each of whom has their own set of attacks, strengths, weaknesses and jutsu moves.

It's all just foreplay for the online mode, which is a really cool open-tournament style called the Forest of Death Exam. The first stage is proving your worth to enter the Tower of Death (they really go all out with the naming of these things!), which involves a random match-up against a fellow online contender. If you manage to do that, there's three levels of the Tower to ascend before you reach the top and the real fun starts. Once you make it to the top you will continue to fight incoming Xbox Live battlers and accrue points until you inevitably get beaten. There's a ton of Achievements linked to the online battle system, so it's a little bit disappointing that finding a game is almost as hard work as becoming a black-belt in ninjitsu. Between the lack of people playing and bad sports disconnecting just before they lose, actually advancing up the Tower of Death is an exercise in frustration.

Thankfully, the online performance is pretty good when you do manage to get a game. The netcode is tight and the visuals are identical to the main game, which looks superb. The cel-shaded style emulates the anime, and if anything the higher resolutions the 360 can pump out actually one-up the cartoon. Leaf Village looks great and exploring it is a breeze, and the battle combos are visceral and incredibly satisfying to watch. The audio is similarly polished; the English voice-overs get the job done well and the various sounds of melee beatings only make dishing out the hurt even more enjoyable. As an added bonus for Naruto fans, Ubisoft have promised to release the Japanese audio with the original actors as free Downloadable Content which is a nice bit of fan service.