Dragonball Z: Budokai
Reviewed for the PS2 by Kristopher Abel
ESRB Rating: Teen 13+
Fighting
RATING: 70%
Developed by: FUNimation
Worth Buying? Rent
Published by: Infogrames
VISUALS: A good match to the cartoon series, very expressive in its animation.
SOUNDS: Features the US voice cast and sound effects. Could use more dialogue in the gameplay itself.
CONTROL: Game can be slow to react to its controls.
+ Story mode scenes. Skill customization.
- Fighting scheme. Special moves.
Box Description:
Enter the Dragon Ball Z Budokai! A spectacular 3D world filled with the fiercest fighters the universe has ever known. Test your skills against the most powerful Dragon Ball Z heroes and the most sinister villains. Every battle is more intense, more dangerous, and more epic than the one before. Will you be the last warrior standing?
Review
Budokai is a game that understands its job is not to be the best fighting game in the world, but to rock the dragon and rock it harder than any game can. While fighting is certainly important in Dragonball Z, it's never at the expense of the intensity with which Goku and the others throw themselves into their struggles, as heroes fighting against the odds or as villains yearning for destruction.
The battles merely play out the exchanges of attitude, style, torment, humour, that spark between the characters in their intense meetings and without those personalities turned up high, there would be no point in making the game at all.
It's remarkable that Budokai does both, fighting and goofing around at the same time. Up until this year it's been accepted that the software needed to create a game isn't suited towards making a cartoon.
Games that have been based on a popular television series or animated movie tend to divide the animation amongst two sets; the low-resolution, low personality game play and the high resolution, polished cut-scenes created on CG Graphics machines and then inserted into the game.
The difference between the two is usually so great it bursts any immersive bubble the game might have had. Budokai is one of several titles this year, including Ratchet & Clank, that have the miracle of using the game engine itself to produce the dramatic cartoon sequences and somehow do it with all of the fluidity of a real cartoon and still create incredibly smooth gameplay.
The character models used for the fight sequences look and feel as if they are the same models making us laugh and gasp in the dramatic plot turns. On top of that, despite being rendered in full 3D, they look just like their 2D cartoon originals, from the proportions of their bodies and faces to the malleable ways their expressions change from one extreme to the next.
Dragonball Z is a rare series in that, despite its cult-like appeal, its fans range in age from toddlers to teens to adults. Because of that, any game based on the series must reach that same wide age range.
For a fighting game there are two ways of trying to do that, either create a game that is simple, fun, but so much so that an experienced player will master it long before he/she is satisfied or try to design the game so that it operates at both a complex and a simple level with the differences mapped to some kind of off switch such as difficulty levels.
With fighting games, the latter usually can result in glitches or gameplay that is anything but smooth. Budokai knows this and so we have a simple fighting system that is easy for young players to play and enjoy, but not complex enough to keep older players captivated over time.
The simple fighting system takes its design right out of the streetfighter's handbook. There are four main modes; story, practice, versus (duel), and tournament (world tournament). You begin with a selection of five fighters, unlocking the other eighteen as you complete the game's story system. The fights are always duels, with each fighter getting one side of the screen, a health bar, and an energy bar which builds up as you fight and can then be used to activate combo moves.
The controls, which revolve around a dynamic of a single punch, kick, guard, or Kri (energy) attack are the same from one fighter to the next, including the combo button sequences. The animated results will differ, so while hitting the punch button four times followed by the Kri button will get you a Kemehameha with Goku, it'll result in a different energy attack if done with Piccolo. Some combos will do spectacular damage while other will perform sequenced grab movements such as tosses and drop kicks. Winning comes down quickly to who can get out their combos first, but thankfully if you can master the timing there are easy counter-moves to stop a big attack before it winds up or in the case of the Kri attacks, you can even deflect them back.
The big twists include the ability for both fighters to actually hover and fly into the air where the 3D arena can be used to dodge or attack your opponent from the side. It's hard to do and the game is quick to adjust back to side to side, but it still takes the fight off of the ground and that's neat. The other twist is the ability to customize your fighters through a skills set. Aside from unlocking new characters in the story mode, you can also unlock new skills and swap them into your character slots. From combo'd attacks to healing and power-enhancing abilities to yes, Dragonballs, you can save them to a memory card and then trade them with friends.
Despite the appearance of variety in the combat, because all the fighters have the same controls and it's just one button for kick, punch, and Kri, you're options are actually limited and no amount of skill editing can really change that. The huge combos, the ones that come with their own cut-scenes are no where near as elaborate or impressive as what you'll see in say, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance or even Virtua-Fighter 4, but they're no yawn either.
While it may be hard to get heated over competing in the Duel or World Tournament modes if you're idea is something a little more serious, serious is the last thing the Story Mode is and that's a wonderful thing. It's a series of Dragonball Z episodes rendered in full 3D complete with the intro endings from the television. With the entire voice cast supplying the dialogue, it does a great job of reproducing the show.
Literally, you can sit down and play an episode, much like watching one on TV, and if you watch them back-to-back, like a TV marathon you'll see the intros repeat with every beginning. The entire series is wildly compounded into quick, summaries, in fact they are so quick that if you aren't already familiar with the US versions of the Saiyan Saga and the plot twists leading up to the Perfect Cell series, it will all pass you by in complete confusion. It becomes a series of cliff-hanger show downs between aliens hopping across space in search of special balls for wishes.
Either way, it's so wonderfully goofy, it's entertaining. Every episode is broken up into fights designed to reflect the situations of the story as well as silly mini-games to catch the plot twists that don't resolve around a fight. You can even unlock different versions of the episode conclusions from what you've seen on TV.
The value in DragonBall Z: Budokai is in the entertaining way it lets fans relive the high-points of the show. It does this better than it's ability to let you feel what it must be like to be Goku or to be Piccolo and fight as they would. The game falls short of being that good and so it doesn't really live up to its sticker price, but as an interactive "Best of" Dragonball Z compilation it's a must-rent.