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The Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) series makes it next-gen gaming debut with Burst Limit, prepare to see your favourite DBZ characters fight at high speeds and unleash a Kamehameha in Hi-Def! First things first, let’s get the graphics
out of the way as they are absolutely terrific, the best I have ever seen for a
DBZ game. Thanks to the extra power of the new consoles, the characters
have been given much more detail, using a cel-shading style to make them look
just like their anime-selves. They have been made to look more polished and all
have much smoother animations then their PS2 counterparts. The battlegrounds,
while not as polished as the characters, have still been given a fair upgrade,
and really help blend everything together nicely. |
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For those of you who are fans of, or have least played the Budokai series on the PS2, you will already have a pretty good idea of how the game plays. For those not in the know, Burst Limit uses a simple, yet effective control system for when you are fighting. Your basic attacks are all linked to the Square button (We will be using the PS3 control for the review) with stronger ‘smash attacks’ on Triangle. These are all well and good, helping dish out a |
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fair amount of damage, but the important ‘special’ attacks are what we want, and they are all on the Circle button. These can range from simple energy blasts from tapping away on the button, to characters signature moves which all require you to tap the analogue stick in a specific direction as well as the Circle button. These are simple to learn, but the trick comes in mastering the use of Vanish and Pursuit attacks, by tapping R2 as an enemy attacks you, or L2 after sending your foe flying, you can wail out more damage to them with these abilities give you the chance to catch them off guard. And of course, it wouldn’t be
DBZ without transformations, when your Ki bar (For your special
attacks) is full, you can tap R1 and depending on the character, you
will either transform to the next power level, or will activate a
high-power state where you will do more damage. |
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Now the story, or lack of one in this case. As good as the game looks and as fun as it is to play, the story mode is unfortunately lacking. The story itself is split into 3 sagas; Saiyan, Frieza and Cell. Each saga has a number of battles to take part in, with more in each saga. Each battle is generally part of a main battle in the sagas, from Goku’s battle with Raditz, to Gohan facing off against Perfect Cell. The only problem is, the actual underlying story is left |
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very much untouched, save for a few brief cut scenes at the start of a battle,
anyone who is new to the series will be lost in what’s going on, moving from
battle to battle without any real idea why people are fighting and indeed who
some may even be. It’s a bother as well, when you can see they seemed to have more things planned out. After completing the Frieza and Cell sagas, you are treated to a short movie, showing in-game models re-enacting scenes from the anime, which begs the question of why they weren’t actually used during story mode itself. The Cell saga movie even shows of Buu, making me believe that this game could have covered the entire series, but was pushed for an early release, meaning a lot of things got dropped out or left behind. Characters are also limited compared to previous games, where Budokai 3 had a whopping 39 characters to choose from (43 if you include fusions) Burst Limit only has 20. Burst Limit seems to be a perfect use for
the phrase ‘1 step forward, 2 steps back’ while it improves in appearance and
playability, it suffers from a smaller roster and a poorly made story mode. Along with the 3 main sagas, Burst Limit contains 2 bonus sagas, Bardok and Broly, which focus on the story of each character. Bardok (Goku’s father) seems to have a ‘what if’ story, focusing on what he may have done had he defeated Frieza. While Broly’s own section seems to be based off ‘The Legendary Super Saiyan’ movie. Ratings Game:
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