GAMING FEATURE: NARUTO ROAN: When East meets West

I'm not a fan of Anime-based video games but it seems that one of them has caught my attention. But what makes it different from other games of past is the fact that a Western company is in charge of everything (except the source story).

Naruto: Rise of A Ninja (for X-Box 360 and PSP) is this game of interest. Though the core gameplay (during climactic fights) has yet to be demonstrated, the game seems to be heading the right direction and if successfully implemented, Ubisoft Montreal's version of the game franchise might just become one of the best anime adaptations ever.

There is this belief that the home country where something is created is best made in the same country but the thing is, Japanese developers typically LIKE making brawling slugfests from anime so it's not a big surprise that only few of those type of games gain any success commercially nor critically. Plus, it's also a rare thing to ever see an anime-inspired game fleshing out all the characters and the mythology in a story/anime, nor truly developing them as the story progresses. This is how Eastern sourced anime getting derived by the Westerners in a game got so significant.

Alas, Naruto: ROAN isn't the first (I think) game franchise to get developed and published from scratch by a Western company (I think.). But disregarding the cultural differences, this new Naruto simply has lots of promise especially since it is being developed by the prestigious Montreal studio of Ubisoft who has won accolades for the Prince of Persia series, XIII and let's not forget Splinter Cell (TRIVIA: They have a Shanghai studio, too! Hehe.). To prove this to you, you can visit Gamespot's preview here.

Halo 3: Bigger than Spidey?

Spiderman 3 raked in a total of 151 million big ones in a weekend. Halo 3 gets 170 million bucks in a day. Is it ever so obvious that games are simply more profitable than movies nowadays?

Well now that Resident Evil is doing big bucks in the box office, why not a Halo movie? Will that equal more money for Microsoft's Marianas-trech-deep pockets? Most probably. But thing is, the idea DID materialize since God-knows-when! Peter Jackson was slated to direct it but Microsoft, Jackson, Universal and 20th Century Fox backed out and stopped financing said project. Oh well...