games: Dragonball Z: Burst Limit

There have been a large number of games made of this popular manga and anime series, but this is the first time its come to 360 and PS3. Sadly Dragonball Z: Burstlimit doesn’t really take advantage of this wider market and is still aimed pretty squarely at existing fans of the franchise, with very little explanation of setting, characters or plot.

That said, this is a straight up fighter with no difficult moral choices involved, and you don’t really need to know the backstory to appreciate beating the crap out of someone else with solid fight mechanics and rather gorgeous cartoonish graphics.

The combat is rather nice in this game with a fast and fluid pace and a nice range of moves. It’s easy to pick up the basics so you can get going straight away, but there is also a lot of depth which will take practise and skill to master.

You can access things like super attack or the ki based Ultimate attack and Aura actions with fairly simple combos so even a complete novice will get some range and power early on. However, a lot of the more sophisticated techniques for things like dodging or crushing through an enemy’s guard rely on timing and are really quite a challenge to get down.

For the uninitiated there are some pretty detailed tutorials and a training area where you can practice.

Interesting innovations include a fatigue bar, which if it becomes full, will render you too tired to move.

As frequent dodging fills the bar, it discourages too passive a style of play, but in practise you don’t really notice it very much.

Another innovation is ‘Drama Pieces’ At the start, you select from a range of cut scenes which can then occur at a random point in the battle and which do have some effect on it, for example your partner could come in and break up a particularly nasty clinch dealing some damage to your opponent.

It’s a nice idea helping to give more of a community feel to the characters and adding something to a battle without ruining it as the effects aren’t usually big enough to swing a whole battle in an unfair and broken kind of way, but the scenes themselves can get a little irritating once you’ve heard them a few times, especially the cheesy motivational ones.

There are three play modes. Z Chronicles, which is the campaign mode; Versus, where you can play against the CPU, a local opponent or online; and Trial, where you compete for rank in themed challenges. To be honest these are a bit samey: the plot holding the campaign together is very thin and so even this is basically just a series of fights. However, it is a good way to make sure you encounter all the different opponents, and of course it enables you to unlock more characters to play and a raft of other content too.

But as with many games of this nature, you’ll probably get the most value out of the versus mode, and this is a great one for playing with a bunch of mates - the fights are fun, it’s good-looking and well animated enough to be entertaining to watch as well as play, and the cartoonish style helps keep things lighthearted. I’m going to give this a pretty solid three stars.

For the best of the rest:

Game Pro:
The first thing anyone’s bound to notice about Burst Limit is its astounding visuals - it is, without a doubt, the best looking title in the long-running Dragon Ball game franchise. The developers put in tons of subtle details like realistic hair and clothing and the characters look as if they were torn straight from the animated show. The cel-shaded visual style really pops off the screen and the in-game cut-scenes are fantastic.

IGN:
Burst Limit is the first entrant into the HD era of gaming for Dragon Ball Z. You’ve seen the hi-res screenshots but that, as they say, is only the beginning. To learn more, we went to Donny Clay, producer at Atari, for details on the fighting mechanics, number of playable characters and much, much more.

Team Box:
Glance quickly at the title of Atari’s and Dimps’ new fighter, and the unfamiliar will probably start questioning the mettle of any game entitled Dragon Ballz. Upon closer inspection, the capitalization of the ‘Z’ and the slight-but-evident spacing suggests that Burst Limit is some Japanese game for young adults; not some ‘M’ rated stag film for fantastical reptiles.