

Paired with the 1080p pixel count, the rustic Japanese villages and colourful fighters stand out with much greater clarity compared to their last-gen counterparts and the visual experience is very, very close on both consoles - and indeed PC. The solid image quality makes the most of the core assets, while the use of hand-drawn textures gives the game a distinctive animated feel that remains faithful to the source material.


The use of post-process anti-aliasing also results in a clean look to characters and environments, with only a few mild jaggies appearing around sub-pixel imagery and finer cel-shaded edges. Along with plentiful use of alpha transparencies for magical attacks, a depth of field effect and a crude frame-blending motion blur implementation add some cinematic flair to the proceedings while also enhancing the intensity of fast-paced scenes. In terms of the fundamentals, both PS4 and Xbox One resolve full 1080p resolution, combined with crisp texture work and a high level of anisotropic filtering that allows the art to remain clear at both long distances and oblique angles. On the whole, there's a sense that we're seeing something of a 'safe' upgrade over the last-gen entrants in the series, rather than a title that takes advantage of PS4 and Xbox One to their fullest extent. The target frame-rate is solidly in 30fps territory, while performance issues can distract on both consoles. It's a pretty comprehensive package but the situation is less impressive from a technical perspective, where developer Cyber Connect 2 could have done more to take advantage of the latest console hardware. Over 100 playable characters appear in this latest release, while enhancements include tag-team fighting, clothing/weapon damage and wall-running in addition to a variety of different gameplay modes. As a conclusion to the long-running Naruto saga, Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 delivers plenty of content for dedicated fans of the series.
