Dragonball Z Budokai. One of the worst fighting games out there.

(02:15:21 CDT)

Dragonball Z Budokai. One of the worst fighting games out there.

Here's a task: find one non-weasle-worded review of Gamecube's Dragonball Z: Budokai that does not begin with "OMG, like when goku fought cell and monkeys i love it the tail and bulma is superhot and now I can play all my favorite characters!!!!" or, to actually quote a review "I luv this game and I still do.But it doesn't have alot of characters.Game play depth isn't that much.Still amazing tho.You wont be dissapointed." He luv this game and he still do. Awesome. The game is amazing, though there isn't much to it. Amazing. By non-weasle-worded, I mean one review that does not go "It's a good game, but...." or "If it were just a little...." None of that. Find an intelligent, non-DBZ fanboy review that praises the fighting system and depth of the game. After half an hour, I have not.

The game has bits. A few of them. You are best finding other bits in other games. There is a story mode, which is a retelling of the major events in the series up to and through the Cell saga. If none of that made any sense, you likely have an IQ higher than the person who wrote that review above (yes, that was the whole thing). It is not annoying, except that to replay it you have to skip retold scenes of the series and the bonuses you get are so random you end up getting the same ones after awhile. It actually is about as easy as you can get. You can beat even the bosses in a few tries, using the same unskilled combination of block-punch-punch block-punch-punch. Then you have the multiplayer mode, which is passable. Then you have the World Tournament mode, which is the crappiest piece of software ever. People keep trying to say that it is hard. It is not hard, it is designed to suck.

There are three buttons: guard (which does not always work), punch, and kick. Sometimes, you can string these together in combinations, though those do not always work. Guard is a catchall sort of guard requiring no skill besides avoid getting grabbed, because you can't guard against a grab. I think they used only three buttons because, gosh darn it, look at the five star fan review above. Four might have been a bit hard on the fellow. He does love turtles, though.

The reason the World Tournament sucks is because you can knock your opponents out of the ring and insta-KO them. Awesome, right? When trying to play Advanced, this means, as many times as not, the AI will hit you once to knock you up, and then hit you again (unblockable, mind you) to knock you out of the ring. Sometimes this is the first hit of the match. Or, when you have knocked the opponent all the way down to nothing, they will hit you with some sparkly move which will knock you down, and then tap kick you all the way to the edge without you being to get up and block the chain, and then knock you out. Or, they will simply use some simple energy attack, which normally does nothing but damage, and it will cause you to fly over half way across the ring and out. Maybe. Because, gosh darn it, in Dragonball-verse, why make anything consistent? Then, you have to sit through about half a minute to a minute of the announcer going "OH NOOOOOO" and it exiting you out, just so you can get back in, and then listen to the announcer tell you who you picked in a fake ass excited voice. "PICOLLLLOOLO versus GOKUUU!" If you do not break the disk into little bitty bits, you are a braver, stupider man, than I.

To improve the complete suck of this game, they made this skill buying option so that you can pick up new skills. As long as you have the patience of Buddha required to exit and re-enter a dozen times because the shop is random, and as you get more and more skills the ones you already have keep showing up again. By the way, you have to beat said Tournament mode to get the money to even begin buying these skills. Then you can customize your character by picking two or three skills and realizing that it takes up the entire bank of possible slots. You know, when I'm playing a game based on a franchise where the average character can destroy a planet, I like knowing picking three skills is ok if I pick crappy ones, but four would be right out. If the anime had played by these rules, those epic battles would be a lot less epic. Probably would have taken few episodes, though.

Basically, then, you have a fighting game where you play the story mode to unlock characters and then play with friends. Ignore the Tournament. Ignore buying skills. The whole thing is a sham banking on DBZ fans buying into it. Even if you buy the most awesome skill in the world, you have about 50/50 chance of being knocked out in the last round of the tournament by some weak punch.

You know, just occurred to me...I think dude thinks "luv" is the past tense of "love".

Blech

Si Vales, Valeo

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