Dragon Ball: Raging Blast MMOMFG Review

Dragon Ball: Raging Blast

The next installment of the Dragon Ball Z video game franchise touts more content than its predecessors to include scenario modes, characters and a plethora of customizable extras while offering the same simple controls and playability of the Tenkaichi Budokkai series of DBZ games, and the colorful cast of characters are the best they’ve ever looked in a video game.

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What’s Good

Seiyuu?  Say me! – Anytime there is a spin-off of an animated series, die-hard fans always appreciate when the characters are voiced by their original actors.  In the case of Raging Blast, all of the original cast of the English dubbed Dragon Ball Z reprise their roles as their respective characters.  The voice track for Raging Blast should hold plenty of nostalgia for those of us that used to watch DBZ after coming home from school, but is also done well enough for the non-diehard to not be annoyed.

So many worlds, so little time – Raging Blast sports a wide variety of gaming modes like the typical tournament mode and story mode, and as obligatory with any console fighting game, a versus mode.  The story unfolds in what this game calls “Dragon Battle Collection,” which fans of Burst Limit and the rest of the Tenkaichi series should be familiar with.  While there are a certain amount of “scenarios” available for play out of the box, many others require beating these or meeting certain requirements to unlock, being the cash crop of the single-player replay value.  The “worlds” of Raging Blast cover all of the Dragon Ball Z series including, *GASP* the Buu saga which has been inexplicably left out of several of the next-generation Dragon Ball Z releases much to the dismay of fans.  In addition to the scenarios that cover the span of the TV series, the game includes characters in scenarios from the movies, as well as the entertaining “What-If” scenarios.  Ever wonder who would win in a fight between Vegeto and Gogeta?  This is the place to find out.

All these familiar faces – This installment boasts one of the largest character rosters in any fighting game.  Weighing in at over 70 characters, including various versions or transformations, DBZ fans will certainly have no problems picking their favorite characters and beating up on some friends or the AI.  Characters that are able to transform are also able to do so in-battle, adding a dramatic effect to the fight.  Every character that should be playable in a Dragon Ball Z game is on the roster, but most will require unlocking and several hours of gameplay to access.

Bet you can’t blow up that house – Destructible environments.  What more can you really ask for from a true 3D fighting game?  Most backgrounds in Raging Blast feature buildings or mountainsides that can be destroyed or that you can send your opponent hurtling into to leave craters.  It adds genuine anime feel to the combat as well as some epic “Hell yeah!” moments in multiplayer.

Hey, good-lookin’ – The colors in Raging Blast are vibrant and the characters come to life in cell-shaded 3D, hurtling through full 3D environments (with boundaries).  Lighting and particle effects are glorious, especially in the characters’ more high powered attacks, especially if it leads to the destruction of a few buildings.  The graphics are highly polished, perhaps to the detriment of a few other qualities of the game, but fans that thrive on character quality will not be disappointed when it comes to fight time.

Simple by design – The controls are quite simple in Raging Blast.  There’s one button for melee attacks, one for energy, Ki, attacks and one for a signature move that are unique to each character.  Defense, however, can get to be slightly more complicated.  In addition to blocking, you can hold down the block button which will modify the function of some face buttons into defensive maneuvers.  It can take some getting used to, but anyone that’s dedicated any time to previous DBZ games will have no problem becoming accustomed to the controls.  While the basic controls are indeed simple, it’s the various combinations and timing that will separate the novices from those that did their homework.

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The Bad

Where the hell are you? – One of the worst parts of this game is the camera.  While camera tracking issues are abundant enough for it to be a noticeable fault in single-player, on same-console multiplayer, which is handled via vertical split-screen, the small view-space per character causes issues during the fast-paced combat and everything that serves to make Raging Blast a very graphically beautiful game becomes a detriment during same-console multiplayer when exploding buildings take up your entire viewing space.  Other consistently occurring issues with camera tracking involve differences in player elevations to the point where  the only way to find your opponent, for lack of a free-camera view, is to use the high-speed dash that automatically causes you to dash toward the enemy or to fire Ki blasts that will at least travel in their direction so you have a loose notion of where to go.  But may the fighting game gods help you if your back is against the wall and your enemy isn’t immediately in front of you.  The transparency clipping is the worst I’ve seen in a game.

Out of control – In theory, the controls are very simple.  In practice, anything that involves only pushing the face buttons repeatedly without additional  inputs from the d-pad is as simple as it gets.  Some of the evasive or defensive abilities get to become a bit tedious to perform in the heat of combat and coupled with the aforementioned transparency clipping camera angles hamper the ability to effectively use these maneuvers.  Timing is also everything when it comes to performing evasive abilities, which is in turn affected by the terrible camera tracking, leaving you rotating the left stick right when you were “about to block that.”

Help me, I’m spinning – And the most annoying part about the combat in Raging Blast?  The excessive use of requiring you to rotate the left stick(the movement stick) 360 degrees repeatedly after EVERY time you are sent flying through the air or are knocked down.  Really?  While playing through, it became obvious that this would be the most frustrating thing about the game.  From what I could tell, all of the energy and excitement of the fight just disappears anytime someone is knocked down as they spaz out on the left control stick just to GET UP FROM THE GROUND.  It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t mesh well with the fast-paced fighting spirit of the combat in Raging Blast.  Why wouldn’t they just incorporate some other method for quick recovery or at least limit the need for the joystick rotations to recovering from stuns or high powered attacks?  Easily the worst part of the game’s control mechanic and for anyone used to REAL fighting games like Tekken or Street Fighter, it puts Raging Blast bordering on unplayable.

Continue 9? – Raging Blast forces you to go through scenarios in order to unlock characters, earn money to purchase upgrades, or new abilities for characters.  That’s a good thing, right?  Not in this case.  Overall, the ends do not justify the means and while there is plenty to unlock it really makes no difference if the effort it takes to unlock is just as painful as a root canal.  While upgrading characters will certainly make single player modes more tolerable, it simply may not be worth the effort of building up a character just to simply “tolerate” an already bad fighting engine.  The frustration in store for someone just dipping into the DBZ game franchise for the first time, and even the tedium the most tolerant DBZ fan might experience may be too much to justify more than just a casual encounter with the game.

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Worth Remembering

Excellent graphics, all-inclusive storyline that would make any die-had DBZ gamer smile.  Superb voice-overs from the original (American) cast (as of this writing, I was not able to confirm whether or not there would be a “Japanese dialogue”  mode, similar to that available in Street Fighter IV).  Also offers an in-depth training mode to teach newcomers by holding their hand (trust me, if you never played a DBZ game on a next-gen console before, you NEED this) through various abilities and defensive moves.

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Worth Forgetting

If you’re not a DBZ fan, then having ever played this game is worth forgetting.  On the other hand, even fans will be dismayed when they find themselves in a corner trap and unable to move while the AI wails mercilessly upon them.  Hell hath no fury like Raging Blast’s AI.  In a game where defense requires precise timing, the AI has it in spades while it is unhindered by shoddy camera angles and the awkwardness of trying to pull off these defensive maneuvers on the control pad.

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While Raging Blast seeks to improve upon the legacy of the DBZ next-gen gaming stigma, it does so at the expense of having its own faults that, while tolerable at first, ultimately render the game annoying and frustratingly unplayable once the initial awe has worn away.

Contributing Writer: Mark Bazar

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