Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22

Steven Beynon
EpicSteve

If your a fan of Dragon Ball Z, then do yourself a favor and never be in the same room with this abomination. Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 has been re-released on the Playstaton for $20.00, and its still total garbage. From the start, the only positive thing to say about Ultimate Battle 22 is the variety of characters. Featuring am impressive roster of 22 characters ranging from Cell, Frieza, Buu, Gotenks, Android 16 & 18, along with a voluminous amounts of Goku, and so on. Once you get beyond the character selection screen, your subjected to the atrocious gameplay.

Unlike its attractive cousin Budokai, Ultimate Battle 22 doesn't follow any concise story, but instead provides the obvious fighting game contentions of fighting through several foes to see the credits. The actual fighting mechanics in this game comes down to button mashing finalizing an end result of matches to be punches, kicks, and ass looking fireballs.

The game's presentation is also prodigiously terrible. Ugly 2D sprites which represent all the classic characters were stripped straight from the old Dragon Ball Z SNES games, and thrown into the bland polygonal backgrounds. It's obvious that the sprites themselves are almost as old as the series itself, and at least eight years older than the Ultimate Battle 22. With all these horrendous complaints, you would think that the sound would at least be bad? Well, bad is an understatement. While any found music is garbage, Infograms didn't even bother to replace the Japanese voice acting for the characters, which will most likely turn off American audiences.

Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 is a game that should pay you to play it, and doesn't need a long winded review to explain how terrible it is. Their is nothing golden here, and no light at the end of this tunnel of crap. If you decide to buy this game you are doing a disservice to yourself, fighting games, the Dragon Ball Z franchise, and the game industry itself. Your sending a clear message that your willing to break out your wallet for bad nostalgia attempts. Infograms made no secret they were trying to cash in on a popular property, don't let them do this, say no to ass games like Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22. Play Budokia instead, or buy a season collection to relive the Dragon Ball magic.

Pros

+Features fundamental characters
+Dogs find playing with disks fun
+Technically works

Cons

-Ugly sprites
-Japanese only voice "talent"
-No structure, nor story
-Terrible fighting system
-Awful sound all together
-Polygonal backgrounds are bland, and lifeless
-Straight up fireballs?
-Overpriced
-No need for it to be ported to the U.S.
-Adds nothing to the Dragon Ball franchise
-Dumb gameplay
-Sprites were taken from the SNES games
-This game is the personification of cash-in