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After two generations of lacking Dragon Ball fighting games (games with plenty of consumer demand), you might guess that Atari would finally buckle down and churn out one for the fans, a Dragon Ball Z fighting game to end all Dragon Ball Z fighting games. Atari's been recently proud to showcase their latest attempt at doing justice the epic battles betwixt Goku, Freeza, and the rest of the DBZ cast, Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3. After spending some time with the game hands-on at Game Stars Live in London, I've come away unimpressed.
The simplistic yet flashy battle system has the potential to be a lot of dumb fun. The straight forward button layout gives two basic attacks (kick and punch), along with a ki blast and block button. There are plenty of short combos to perform in a dial-a-combo fashion, though they're all pre-determined combinations and don't really allow freedom for innovation. Even worse, most of the combos are virtually the same—since there are no high and low attacks to worry about, you'll likely only concern yourself with the most damaging combo you find.
A ki meter adds a bit of complexity to the otherwise stale combat. While holding down the guard button, tapping back twice starts charging the ki bar. Using the ki bar energy, a number of projectile attacks can be lobbed at enemies, which can be dodged by simply stepping into the foreground or background, or deflected with timed presses of the guard button. The system itself is well designed enough, but it's really the controls that drag down what could be pretty fun.
No matter which character is at play, the controls feel uncomfortably stiff and unresponsive. It could be the fault early code, but right now the game doesn't flow as well as it obviously wants to. When things magically do go right, the fighting of Budokai 3 closely resembles the insane battles of the animated series, with flashy attacks that smash opponents into walls and across gaping chasms. But due to the stiff controls, most battles end up riddled with awkward moments of jerky steps and button-mashy combat that don't feel right within the Dragon Ball Z universe.
It's certainly not the basic concepts holding back Budokai 3. The simplistic set-up could provide a subtle depth if only the controls would lose their rigidity. With a more fluid control system, the combat system that's already implemented could be fully realized and lead to some interesting fighting. We'll keep you posted as we near the game's release later this year.
sorry there are no new pics this time
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