Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Been there, done that"

The following is dedicated to the poor people who bought this game only to discover that it was pretty crappy, but went into denial about it because they didn't want to believe they had wasted money when they could have just played more Budoukai 3, or even Tenkaichi 3.

Raging Blast is the next mini series in Atari and Namco Bandai's long history of milking money out of the Dragon Ball franchise. Curiously, nobody seems to be catching on that the quality of these games never improve over time.Tenkaichi could not match the quality of the Budoukai series, and Raging Blast has yet to even meet the quality of the Tenkaichi series, hmm...Today's motto will be:

"THE MORE YOU KNOW."

The Budoukai series of games was the first majorly successful set of DBZ games, spanning all three major consoles at the time until it peaked with Budoukai 3. I dare you to contest that Budoukai 3 wasn't the best in its series. The game was the end result of the logical progression any series of games should take: More characters, an improved fighting system, better story mode, plenty of extras, customization, pleasant graphics...The game received good marks from generally everybody for obvious reasons, it was a good game that finished up an otherwise average series of titles. It even gathered attention from outside of the DBZ fan base, a feat that has not been imitated since.

The Tenkaichi series followed Budoukai 3, changing gameplay radically for something new and different. Now the gameplay was something approaching a semi free roaming 3rd Person Fighter, a unique sub-genre that hasn't been imitated outside of the DBZ games. As with all new ideas, the first game bore much promise, but was clunky in both gameplay and controls, and lacked polish. By the time Tenkaichi 3 came around to finish off this set, the series had gained a massive character roster, larger arenas, a better fighting system, nicer graphics, and fairly good marks, though not up to Budokai 3's standards. The gameplay was much simpler than the Budoukai series' focused more on allowing the player to chain combos off of any possible move. Inventive, but flawed, and the Tenkaichi series really only flourished with DBZ fans.

Then came Burst Limit, a spiritual successor to the Budoukai series, or at least it would have liked to have been, but was sadly a very butt game that accomplished nothing outside of translating DBZ into an online multiplayer setting. Burst Limit features lovely HD graphics, a small character roster with the rewarding combo system from Budoukai 3, an incredibly stupid item system including the dreadful "Drama Pieces" which froze gameplay for multiple seconds so that one of many repetitive cut scenes can play out and declare some new change to the battle. Burst Limit's main issue was that it was trying to retrace Budoukai 3's steps but failed to build upon that game's successes. There were far less characters, arenas, few extras, little meaningful customization, and in places the presentation was truly dull (drab uses of color in several places, mediocre voice acting). The game's saving grace was its online multiplayer function, which kept its otherwise below average self from sinking completely.

Sensing that Burst Limit was not what fans wanted, Namco Bandai and Atari decided to update the Tenkaichi series instead. The best way to do that, they figured, was to take one step forward and two steps back.

Raging Blast is the updated Tenkaichi series, and it seems to be here to stay, as it is receiving a sequel in about a month at the time of this writing. RB features a considerably smaller character roster than Tenkaichi 3, stock music, a forgettable single player campaign, and a few slightly interesting extra modes that can be played solo to obtain Dragon Balls and make a wish for some random prize not limited to new special attacks, money, and items. RB makes up for its lame lack of interesting features by providing one of the best customization systems since Budoukai 3's, an improved fighting system, and an entertaining online multiplayer mode.

The combat system now approaches something vaguely resembling a hybrid of Budoukai 3's combo system and Tenkaichi's half free roaming fighting style. This is a nice step in the right direction, but several characters operate using the same combo styles as other characters. The game works best when each character feels unique to learn, and stale when you find your third Vegeta clone, only the new guy is slower than Vegeta and would never be your first pick. Additionally, the combo system alerts you to success or failure by either flashing the screen gold or red. Messing up a combo causes the game to stall your character's movements just slightly for a second. The combat moves fastest when combos are being properly implemented by both sides, and feels mediocre and slow when nobody can pull off a proper combo.

The camera is also horrendous, zeroing in on people's backsides, rock walls, and anything but the action about 30-40 percent of the time. Additionally, several of the items added for customization are pointless, good only for gaining an unfair advantage over another player. Random Vanishing is an item that causes you to dodge without doing anything approaching skill or reaction timing. This leads to other players countering by setting up custom characters designed to cancel out Random Vanishing, which leads to a whole lot of nothing as customization boils down to necessary countering of cheap tactics. The online multiplayer is often spoiled by idiots who think they have skill because they pick the fastest characters in the game, strap on defense buffs and extra life bars, and then disconnect their internet if you defeat them with items of their own.

Few players in RB's community will play without items. This is probably for three reasons: Normal mode requires actual skill, strong reflexes, and you can't give your characters overpowered abilities through items. By no means is RB a balanced game, the characters are not created equal, but playing without items allows one to develop some actual skill at the game that can transfer into the item nonsense field. It's no small wonder that the leaderboards for online versus mode are dominated by players who stick to customized item matches and use only the fastest characters in the game. Items allow for lazy wins, hiding behind defense buffs, extra life bars, random vanishing, and other stupid crap while calling it "skill".

The online multiplayer is the best part of RB, which is an otherwise average, boring game that manages once again to do far less than its preceding series of games. Don't be upset if and when you get trashed trying to play custom matches with items, just remember that no player worth their salt would deny a match on even ground. If you lose to somebody on custom, but they refuse to play on normal for whatever excuse, don't resort to their cheap tactics of using item buffs, keep looking for people who actually want to play to get good and have fun.

Or better yet, don't buy this game. Wait for Raging Blast 3, it will be loads better than this game, I assure you.