This game's like a manga-style Mario Party only more focused on fighting.
User Rating: 8 | Gacha Mecha Stadium Saru Battle PS2
In this game you travel to a virtual world to participate in a tournament. The 50+ arenas each have different objectives like deathmatches, coin collecting, and race tracks. Your arsenal contains swords, slingshots, RC cars with detonation charges, portable helicoptor blades, and deadly hula hoops. Ocasionally you'll get more powerful weapons like boats with gun placements, submarines with torpedoes, and tanks. You can also give your character a new outfit for that fighting spirit and upgrade their weapons. Arenas range from boxing rings to a jungle to just something elaborate like a floating dissolving boxing ring. No character is the same ever. For example, as Spike you just get a normal slingshot but as Team Monkey you get an SMG.
The controls handle pretty decent. You use the left analog stick to move your guy and the right one to use your selected weapon. There's even a setting where you can get a sniperscope on 1st person view with the slingshot.
Plus you can call a Monkey Pal to beat up a person for you. Multiplayer is 2 for Story Mode and 4 for regular mode. The AI difficulty can range from 'kill me' to 'you must die right now' so it's pretty outstanding.
Overall this game is good for near beginner player groups. It's very hard to kill 3 AI on Expert difficulty on your own though so it's best to play with some friends. Hope you have fun with this game!
