If the opening video of Dragon Ball Z doesn’t fill you full of breathless anticipation, you’re in for a world of confusion. This is a game that is aimed squarely at those both familiar with and enthralled by the TV show. If you’ve ever spent countless hours sat in your living room, watching it and only wishing that you could be in the midst of the on-screen carnage, then perhaps this game is for you? I ask that with trepidation, for as a newcomer to all things Dragon Ball Z, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on during my time with the game; whether it was a loving recreation that fans will sink hours in to, or merely a cynical cash-grab.
Not being able to comment on how faithfully this game represents the show, I am left to purely judge the game in front of me. Verdict: this game is a mess. Perhaps I started it on the wrong foot – I was expecting something akin to Street Fighter. Instead, what I got was a third-person fighting game in spacious arenas…which, yes, sounds like a fighting game. Here, however, you fight multiple enemies, ranging from regular goons up to bosses, all 'lovingly' recreated from the TV programme. You fly around the map, dealing earth-shaking punches and shooting out energy. There are special moves that look vaguely impressive the first time you perform one. After the one hundreth time, this awe has worn itself severly thin. Blocking seems to matter little at first; I took any number of hits and was still able to go back for more, achieving the best possible rank after only playing missions once. Once levels become tougher, however, you suddenly find the block to be completely ineffective: getting caught in the first move of an enemy’s attack sequence seems to render you useless until it ends, whereby you pick yourself back up and continue the relentless assault. Should you die, you are immediately resuscitated at the expense of a oercentage of the points you collected thus far.
Co-op is the major draw here. Playing by yourself, you’re regularly accompanied by anywhere up to 3 or more AI controlled companions. Missions, particularly those against bosses, require the power of everyone combined. There is the potential for teamwork, though whenever a tag-team move occurred, I was none the wiser as to what had initiated it. Fights are a mess of colour, noise and confusion, all at once. If you’re not locked on at any moment, the tendency is to fly around aimlessly. A quick tap of the RB button will put you back on course, but if there are multiple enemies within range, the game habitually is unable to remain locked on to one specific foe, meaning the camera is forever swinging around, making you lose all sense of what is going on, if you ever had any to begin with.
There is also no discernible story, just a menu screen where you select the next mission, fight until the enemy is defeated, and repeat ad nauseam. It seems like an attempt to fit in as many of the characters people know into one space and just let them face off, which is probably cause enough for celebration for some. However, for the rest of the gaming population, there is simply a lack of motivation to continue on when all the separate parts appear so disparate and fail to add up to a greater whole.
I feel as if I’ve given this game more word space than it deserves. It speaks volumes that even as I look back over the review, it reads as if it’s full of padding, to make the game seem more substantial. In truth, there is nothing here for the majority of gamers. Don’t waste your time or your money.
This is where stars go for games deserving of them. Dragon Ball Z is not one of them.