Like a car crash, but more explosions and less sadness
Positives:
- Perfect for DBZ fans, especially if you enjoyed the original Budokai series
- Great visuals
- Cool super attacks
- The addition of drama pieces are a good idea
Negitaves:
- Online play can be laggy if using a cross country connection and definitely not enough there to keep you coming back
- You probably wont enjoy this and definitely wont know what's going on if your not a DBZ fan
- Only includes the first three sagas
- Drama pieces and rank requirements get repetitive fast
DragonBall Z: Burst Limit is your typical "hey it seems people don't like our current games, maybe we should take a step back" game. After the garbage that was the Tenkaichi series, Atari decided that maybe the original Budokai series has something that could possible be done again. What I mean from this is that instead of the 3D fighting areas and battle/combat style they had been doing for the last three console games, they went back to just 2D fighting in a 3D environment.
Burst Limit is unlike a game such as Street Fighter and more on the Soul Calibur side of things, minus ring outs. It has you fighting one other enemy on a 2D plain but at the same time lets you move in a 3D way to create yet another 2D plain. If this confuses you, don't worry, it doesn't really matter. This element of battle and game play is much like the original three Budokai games and pretty much mimics the basic idea of them all.
The single player mode has you going through different 'scenes' in the DBZ show/movie history and recreating them in a one on one fight. Along with some good looking cut scenes, it makes for a pretty good time. One thing it doesn't seem to realize is that there are people out there who either don't know what DragonBall Z or don't care enough to have watched all one million episodes and don't know the story line. It has you going through each fight in the correct order based off the show through each of the first three sagas of DBZ (yes thats right, it ends after the cell saga) but what it doesn't do it tell you what's going on and why each of these things are happening. Unless you have watch the show, you have no idea how and why these characters are beating the crap out of each other. What makes this element worse is the game decides that you can finally get the privilege of knowing these answers after you finish the around twenty something fights that make up a saga by use of a voiceless cut scene.
Aside from that, Burst Limit doesn't really have many other great flaws. As stated, it revisits it's original roots but that's what makes it so great. Once you drop the giant 3D arenas in which causes you to have to try and use the environment as more of a weapon than what the show was really about (your fists and energy) you can get back to actually back to what DBZ is actually about, hitting people really hard. This game should make most fighting genre fans happy and should please DBZ fans all around.
The graphics of this game are very good, and combining that with the monstrous flashing lights that people into the game and show will know as energy attacks, your in for quite a good looking game. Some of the stronger attacks look really good when shown on these powerful consoles and well surpass the Budokai series. Some of the better light shows will be seen when two powerful attacks collide and the sparks are flying everywhere.
Also this game involves online play, so you can battle with your friends or anyone. One thing that lacks here is there is some lag to the fights if your not in the same country and the person. Aside from straight one on one fighting online, there isn't much else to do. Though there really couldn't be to much else to put online so overall the online component isn't a wonderful feature that will have you coming back to the game.
Probably the biggest point about this game s its use of in fight cut scenes known as "drama pieces." These stop the fight when you meet certain components and cause a short, maybe less than 8 second cut scene. At first these are a cool idea, but then you will begin to notice that they do the same maybe dozen scenes over and over and they're not even a little different. The only different is the character performing it, other than that they just pasted a different body onto the motion path.
Another add on is the requirements that your ranking per fight is based on. These are things like "perform an ultimate attack" or "finish while destroying the battle field" which once again, start off as a cool idea and will make you want to try and meet as many as you can. By meeting enough or these, your overall ranking for that fight will increase. The downside to these is that they never ever change. For every fight you can just do the same thing to meet the same requirements and you will usually get the same ranking. It would have been real nice to see some storyline/character specific requirements thrown in there.
Overall this game meets the standards you'd want if your a DBZ fan but will come up as shallow and not worth while for others. Though it does have a lot to do if your wanting to finish every fight and get a good rank on each one of their difficulties. The online play is a must have section to this game but wont last long for you and definitely wont have you coming back to this game over and over.
