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| Goku: "Freeze, You mad?" |
The 2nd installment of the Raging Blast, or 5th installment of the Sparkling/Tenkaiichi series, Raging Blast 2 brings a little more to table for fans of the long-going series. Does this game ascend to a level beyond Super Saiyan, or is it just a raging failure.
The Story: Sense the PS2 Budokais, DBZ games have always stuck with the tried and true story line. Usually starts with Goku and/or Piccolo VS Raditz, and worked it's way through the battles to either the Cell Games, End of Z, or End of GT. RG2 tosses the original story mode aside, and instead gives us Galaxy Mode. A outside world map, kind of reminiscent of Super Mario 3, letting you follow certain paths to different battles. Throughout these battles, you can unlock items to customize your characters, unlock new characters and levels, costumes, and art. For a fighting game in general, it makes the depth of the game last a lot longer then a generic arcade mode. 5/5
The Look: A vast improvement from the previous entries. A lot more details when it comes down to damaged characters, energy blasts, level damage, and the fact that you can find yourself in a pile of rocks once knocked down is icing on the cake. The animation when the characters are talking could use a little improvement, and only other complaint, may it be just fan-boy bitching, is that I miss the characters going from super forms to base forms when taking a high amount of damage. It's strange to me to be knocked out on the ground as SSJ3 Goku. Again, fan-boy bitching. 5/5
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| Gohan Smash! |
The Sound: Those who didn't like the music from the previous series will be glad to see a a new soundtrack in each level. Nothing amazing, but still music that goes with the battles. There is a moment of bad-ass when you or your opponite uses "Raging" mode, and "Battle of the Omega", the games opening song, starts to play. The only thing that would be more bad-ass is \"Libera Me"\ From Hell from Gurren Laggan started playing instead. 3/5
The Feel: Tossing aside a lot of the controller issues from the previous game, RG2's controller scheme is a little more simple. Basic taps or double-taps of buttons do movement speed increases and the combo system is a little less broken. (No more full power-up, and spam attack on till gauge runs out.) Timing is still needed for people who want to be able to dodge melee attacks, or jump out of the way of major attacks. You can also now deflect attacks, destroying any back-ground element that may be in the way of the blast. When character's beam attacks clash, the game gives you a second to realize that moves are clashing, making it easier to defend yourself. The game still needs a run though Training mode to get a good feel, but the game is a lot easier to pick up then previous installments. It's not perfect, yet. 4/5
The Fillings: With about 60 base characters and their 40 variants/transformations/fusions, you can create almost every battle from Dragon Ball Z/Kai. While the character count isn't as high as Tenkaichi 3, removing original DB and GT characters, the amount of characters there are still are near 100. Adding some more villains, such as Hachiyack from the "Plan to Eradicate All Saiyans" add on movie, Tarble from the most recent "Son Goku and His Friends Return!" special, and useless one-shot movie enemies smooths out the play list quite far, but I'd rather of had King Cold over Dore. I can't even remember what movie he came in. Cooler? I bet you couldn't remember without looking either.
Having different super moves and ultimates though customization makes it to where you're not always going to be fighting a Goku that uses "Instant Kamehameha." The 10 levels from the first RB game return with 4 new ones, including my new favorite "Dark Planet." Single Player mode boosts 2 modes of fighting (sorry, not counting Training and Practice.), while multilayer sports the usual
PvP/PvCPU/CPUvsCPU, and obligatory tournament mode has various forms. Online mode that promises to be better then the past game's, and a museum that houses unlocked pictures, sound clips, music, and movies (Including the Re:Rendered Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, or as some people think, the DBZ OAV.) round out the last bit of stuff. Detail in battle is even increased, adding special effect and dialog during battles as well as "Battle of Omega" playing while in Raging mode. Another great effect in battle is team attacks, used by fulfilling certain reactions. For players who like Goku and Krillin to team up, you'll find that when Goku falls in battle he can give some Spirit Bomb/Genkidama energy to Krillin for a Super Team Attack, like seen during the Goku VS Vegeta fight early in Z. Despite all these great improvements, a 2 on 2 mode and larger levels are still needed. 4/5
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| "Have you seen our Daddy?" |
Overview: If you own Tenkaichi 1-3 and Raging Blast, you may want to wait till a 3rd game is announced before you purchase RG2. It's a great DBZ game, but thats as it stands we may get an even better game later on. Like 95% of anime games, the main audience is fans of the series, as well as people who are willing to pay $50 for a slightly better game and a 30min animated special they may have only seen in small quicktime movie files. As a fan, I do plan on purchasing it, but not at full price. I'll wait till I get a Gamefly Coupon and the game is under $40. As it may seem like I've talked greatly about this game, but my overview may seem crude, please remember that I bought Burst Limit day 1, and forever re great it. It's going to take a little more to get me to buy another DBZ game on day 1.
Good for fans of the series, maybe decent for others, but don't force your friends to play just because you have no one to show off to.
Four Bitchy Fanboys out of Five.
4/5
