Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit

You patiently wait as your Ki charges, just managing to keep yourself alive. Then as you reach full Ki, you transform into the deadly Super Saiyan and take out your opponent with a range of fast-paced attacks. He falls back to the ground below and you watch, a grin implanted on your face..

The Dragon Ball Z franchise makes a return to gaming, but this time it’s taking a shot at the next-gen consoles. Releasing on both the Xbox 360 and PS3, Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit hopes to improve on previous titles and make itself a name in the next-gen world.

Dragon Ball Z features the storyline beginning of the Saiyan Saga through to the ending of the Cell Saga. To sum it up, the Saiyans are an alien race of warriors who crave destruction. They arrive on the Earth to destroy it and the many Earthlings that inhabit it. It’s a tale that involves two main characters putting aside their differences to team up and save the world together, the usual superhero kind of stuff.
Lucky for myself, I have watched the series a few times and played multiple games on it, making myself quite familiar with the storyline. The storyline is covered very briefly throughout the game, using short cut scenes to explain what’s happening. This is what makes the game a definite fan’s game, the average gamer will find it incredibly hard to understand what’s going on without having watched the shows. This is quite a hard downfall for the game and franchise as a proper explanation of what’s happening could have encouraged more gamers to get into the franchise. But the story doesn’t really last long in the game, because it’s mostly back-to-back constant battles. Thankfully however, the storyline is not the main aspect of the game, that comes down to gameplay.

The combat of the game is simple yet with the right combos, can be very interesting. There are loads of different aspects to the combat, with many different ways to attack and defend. Defending your character requires pressing the right button at the right time and can really allow you to gain the upper hand in battles. Attacking is where the depth of the combat system comes in. There are simple kicks, punches and combos you can pull off but the most damaging attacks are made available once you’ve charged up your Ki Gauge. This opens up many options to you; transforming, Ultimate Attacks, Aura Spark and other moves individual to certain characters. Some forms of transformations need to be unlocked for characters however. But it has to be said, even with these exciting moves at your fingertips, the old-favourite button-bashing still seems to work best with this game. However if properly learned and executed at the perfect times, more advanced moves will come out top. Becoming fatigued is a new feature added to the combat also, in which you have to rapidly press any button to regain your energy. This doesn’t happen very often however, unless you use defensive attacks a lot. When in Aura Spark you can hit an opponent upwards and follow them into the air, engaging in a fast-paced fight involving you to button-bash. Goes along with the rules, faster fingers win.

Drama Pieces are a new and extremely interesting addition to the series. Individual to each character, these are picked at the start of the battle and come into effect in a certain situation of the battle. They change one or more elements of the battle such as a health boost. They don’t make a big difference to the battle, you wouldn’t lose if they were triggered but it’s a nice effect that gives the characters more personality.

DBZ: Burst Limit features a total of 21 characters, starting line up being Goku, Krillen and Piccolo. A total of 5 stages are available for battles to take place, however no interaction is possible with the environment as with previous instalments. The characters have been sliced hugely, with previous titles catering for around 100 characters. The stages also seem to be lacking a bit in variety but it’s not really an important aspect of the game. Characters, stages and additional character abilities are all unlocked by playing through the Z Chronicles Story Mode.

Graphics are the games strongest feature by a mile! The cell-shaded characters look amazing and almost identical to their appearance on the show. Pop-out bright colours work well for both the characters and stages, bringing a distinct anime feel to the game. Definitely a success in the graphics department and one of the best anime visuals game around.

The cut scenes present in the game are great fun to watch, adding more enjoyment to battles. The animated bubbly graphics and sound effects compliment the cut scenes hugely. Adding more personality to the battles and letting you sit back and watch some lightening-paced action.

The game’s music is fast-paced and works great with the fighting scenes. With guitar solos and lightening riffs pumping in the background as you pound your opponent. The opening scene before the menu features a song also, in Japanese along with battle scenes from the game. The character’s voices are impressive also, with them sounding identical as they do on the animated show. You also have a choice of the Japanese or English character voices, so if you want it to sound more original you can. However one thing does bug me, the fact the character’s mouth rarely moves in time to the voice.

Online is an option in this game, along with 2-player battles on one console. Online is brilliant if there’s no lag as that seems to affect what you’re capable of doing, but matches with lag are truly horrible. There are leaderboards that will track your power-ranking, which will enable you to see how you compare to others.