Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 

We’ve all watched Dragon Ball Z at some point in our life, am I right? There was that lure of guys with spiky hair beating the crap out of each other, lasers shooting out of their hands, and some totally stupid plot-line that never made any sense. And there was undoubtedly nothing else on TV. So, as you might imagine, there’s been a series of fighting games based around Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast is the next one in line.

Because I’m feeling nice, I’ll get the positives out of the way. The graphics are quite nice, in a HD cel-shading kinda way. All the characters look how they do in the cartoon, so fans of the series will instantly recognise the many fighters available to play as. A nice little touch is the damage your clothing takes when you get hit, which adds a small level of depth that you wouldn’t expect from this kind of game.

3rd Person Fighting 

Sound-wise everything is pretty ok. You’ve got the cheesy American dialogue that adds a layer of unintended humour to the mix, which is always a plus. Aside from that, you have the standard comic-book sound effects taking place whenever you punch a dude, or when he punches you for that matter.

Which leads me to the biggest problem I found: gameplay. The camera is in the third-person over the shoulder perspective, which for a fighting game is just plain wrong. Add that to the fact that you can’t move the camera at all, and you’re always locked onto your enemy, and you get a viewing position that’s too obscured by your own fighter to be any good. Also, on one occasion my opponent was directly above, and I was next to a wall, so the camera decided it had to look up too high so that I lost sight of my character, and not high enough to see my opponent.

Scripted Fighting Moves 

The fighting itself is uninspiring at best. You punch and kick with X and Y, although there’s no real indication of which button does which. You can also speed dodge by holding A, so when your opponent is halfway across the map you can get up close to him again. B apparently does nothing. I saw a bar that kept filling up when I landed hits that seemed to be some sort of super-power bar, but I couldn’t work out any way of using it, since I had no idea what the controls where. Which is a shame really, because the computer launched special move after special move (most of which are unblockable) until I was dead. Cheap doesn’t quite describe it.

The game promises to have the complete storyline of the Dragon Ball series, along with “what-if?” situations, online play, tournaments, and customisation. Sadly, none of this was available to me, so I can’t comment on any of it. Overall, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast needs some difficulty tuning, and I probably would’ve found it more fun if I’d had an idea as to how to fight. If you’re already a fan of the series, or you’re looking for a fighting game to fill the time until Tekken 6, you might want to check this out.

Dragon Ball: Raging Blast hits the stores on November 10th.