Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout (Playstation)

Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout is not the first Dragon Ball fighting game on Sony’s Playstation console, nor is it the first Dragon Ball game to appear on a 32-bit console. However, it is the first Dragon Ball game to make use of a fully 3D engine, making it a landmark of sorts.

Normally, I would start the review proper by outlining all the positive things about a game, but unfortunately I can’t think of one good thing about Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout. The intro FMV, perhaps. Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout had a really kick ass FMV intro, which you can watch below:

Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo (PSP)

I’m going to admit right off the bat that I’m not familiar with the Saint Seiya franchise. I read a little bit of the Lost Canvas manga and I’m familiar with the premise, but I’m not well-versed on the specifics. I had a copy of Saint Seiya: The Hades for the PS2, so that will be my only point of comparison when assessing the PSP fighting game Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo. I apologize in advance if I miss out or am mistaken on something that an anime episode or manga chapter should have clarified.

Anyway, I only have the Japanese release of Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo so I had to do a little bit of exploring and trial and error before I was able to navigate the game. There are minimal English words (the “VS” and “CPU” words will be extremely helpful here) so this won’t be a pick up and play title unless you can read Japanese. Fortunately, this is a fighting game so you won’t need to bother with the story. Once you learn how to navigate the menu, you’ll be able to play your money’s worth out of the game.

Visually, Saint Seiya Omega: Ultimate Cosmo is one of the many games on the PSP that managed to look gorgeous even if compared with current gen console games, owing to the fact that it uses cel-shading, which age well compared to standard textured polygons. The characters look sharp and the backgrounds are crisp and colorful. You will be forgiven if you mistook the game as 2D sprite-based. Sound is also decent and crisp, although the sound of grunts and thuds can be repetitive at times.

Dragon Ball Kai Ultimate Butouden (Nintendo DS)

When the Nintendo DS got Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors 2, gamers were willing to cut it some slack even though the overall quality of the game was way below the PSP’s Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai, citing the Nintendo DS’ underpowered hardware as the reason why a decent Dragon Ball fighting game wasn’t possible.

And then came Dragon Ball Kai: Ultimate Butouden, which proved that it had nothing to do with the hardware - the Nintendo DS was perfectly capable of carrying a bonafide 3D fighting game that can at least come close to the PSP’s admittedly superior offerings.

Dragon Ball Kai: Ultimate Butouden is the spiritual successor to the Super Butouden series on the Super Famicom back in the 90s. While not made by the same developers, majority of the gameplay mechanics from the original Butouden series found their way to the DS, with some minor tweaks and polish, of course.

Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo (Wii)

Let’s get this out of the way first. Unless you’re a REALLY, REALLY big fan of the Dragon Ball series – the one with Goku as a young boy with exceptional martial arts abilities, not the one where he’s a blonde man who can punch cities into dust – you’d best stay away from this title. That’s not to say that Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo doesn’t have any redeeming value. It’s a actually a decent game, Dragon Ball fan or not, and has extra content that would put other games to shame. It’s just that even with all the polish, graphical and content-wise, it still only comes off as a mediocre game.

Adding insult to injury, the Gameboy Advance’s Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure manages to do everything that Revenge of King Piccolo aspired to do and more, for a fraction of the hardware power. Which means Revenge of King Piccolo is further demoted from being a mediocre game to being an unnecessary one.

New Screenies for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

Namco Bandai has recently posted a new batch of screenshots for the upcoming update to the Ultimate Ninja Storm franchise, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution. Judging by the screenshots, graphics-wise it’s not going to offer much in the way of upgrades compared to Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst, especially since Full Burst didn’t offer any visual upgrades to UNS 3 and UNS2 (save for a few bug fixes and tweaks pertaining to the frame rate.)

However, we all know that people are already satisfied with the graphics engine of the Ultimate Ninja Storm franchise and don’t really mind not having extra bells and whistles. The true selling point of Revolution is gameplay tweaks and additional characters. There’s no concrete details about the gameplay tweaks yet, but info about additional characters have already been provided by Namco Bandai.