Tag Archives: Dragonball FighterZ

Super Saiyan!

Introduction

The 2 Guys Gaming got together for the first time in months. With the business of the holidays, the start of the new semester, and just general overall old man Mr. Winter, we just weren’t able to connect and make plans. Whenever we do, we both say that we need to do it more often and then life gets in the way. Well, I’ve made last year and this year about telling life to go to hell when it decides to get in the way of my grand plans. We’ve got games to play and podcasts to record!

During this visit, we tried out his new arcade stick emulator, Padora’s Boxx by beating the old classic puncher X-Men. It seemed much shorter and easier than when I was a teenager. it’s a game where you walk sideways and punch things. It’s not like we were playing 3 dimensional chess back then. Why did the game seem so difficult? Well, Chris and I didn’t have to plug quarters into the machine. When you aren’t paying a quarter every 5 minutes to revive your character, you aren’t as aware of your limitations when playing the game.

The difficulty is ratcheted up, though when you are hitting the enemy with skateboards and vacuum cleaners instead of lasers and Adamantium claws.

We also did a Winchester draft (more on that in a couple of days) and played some of the new fighting game Dragonball Fighterz. Chris has raved about the game to me and he even wrote a review of the game last week. He was so excited about the game that I couldn’t wait to play it. We waited until the end of the night to play. Without giving too much away, it was worth the wait.

The Good

The best part of the game is that they have made it very noob friendly. I had never played the game. I hadn’t even watched any gameplay videos like I told Chris I might after seeing some screenshots and thinking that the game looked absolutely gorgeous. I was going in completely blind, so to speak. That made no difference.

The move scheme is, as Chris explained it, “If you can do a fireball motion, you are all set”. Because of that, I was pulling off crazy combos right out of the gate. Well, based on my previous experience in fighting games, they were crazy combos. I imagine in this day and age, they are just a basic combo that any preschooler could pull off with his eyes closed and both hands ties behind his back. I even beat Chris in the first game. Beginner’s luck?

And you had to walk through the snow, uphill both ways, in order to pull off a combo.

Then I beat him again, and a third time. I can’t remember how many times I actually beat him in a row before he finally got a win, but it was at least three. More on that in a bit. It sounds weird and it might just have been because I was new to the game, but it felt like something different happened every match.

One time, one of the characters flew up into the air, seemed to collect a bunch of energy, and then threw it down onto the other guy. Another time, Chris finished my guy off by throwing him threw 3 mountains, bringing the third one down on top of me. Several times, it looked like an atom bomb went off to end the fight.

One time, I somehow pulled off some sort of “finishing” move. It was called an ultimate devastation or something like that. It wasn’t quite a fatality like from Mortal Kombat. The camera panned back, the animation was a huge explosion, and then the words came across the screen. I can’t remember exactly what the words were and I can’t find any evidence of it online, but both Chris and I sat in stunned silence for a few seconds. He finally said, “I’ve never seen that happen before.” Mind you, he’s been playing the game about 2 hours a day for a week to this point.

Animations like this are commonplace. Needless to say, this isn’t a game for those with epilepsy. Heck, they may find that it’s bad for people who have functioning eyes.

The Bad

Naturally, having grown up during the hey day of Street Fighter 2, I’m a Capcom baby. Since this game utilizes a lot of the same functionality in moves and super combos, it made me think of the Capcom games. In fact, during our games, Chris said something like “Capcom should take notes.” While I agree, that’s not quite my main disagreement. Because I grew up with the Capcom characters, I know which characters I like and which I don’t. Having never watched any DragonballZ, I had no idea about anything about any of the characters. I knew some of the names from various memes and everyone knows the “over 9000!” line. Other than that, though, I knew nothing.

In addition, there aren’t that many characters to begin with. I mean, the character selection screen is full, but many of those characters are just alternate versions of the other characters. I think I counted 3 or 4 different Gokus and that might be low. Again, as a new entry into the Dragonball Z universe, maybe there just aren’t that many characters in the series. However, as someone who likes a variety of characters to choose and try out in a new game, that was a bit disappointing.

Finally, with all of the interaction and animations, they do get stale. Most notably, the entry animation when one of your characters gets knocked out gets old real fast because it never changes. The new character just flies in along with the opposing character and they punch each other’s fists. This is quite disappointing as I was at least expecting each pair of characters to have their own animations similar to the beginning fight sequences.

Yep, that’s it. I kid you not.

The Ugly

I know that I often struggle to find “The Ugly” for many of these articles, but this game is as close to a perfect fighter as I’ve played in a long time. Other than the few minor nit picks I had for “The Bad” section, I have no complaints about this game. Certainly not anything that could possibly be elevated to “Ugly” status.

So, I will just take this space to gloat a little bit more. It took Chris a few matches to finally beat me and I probably won about 70-75% of the matches that we played. I suppose we could just call it all beginners luck, but I’m going to go with L2P Noob. I’m just too good for you.

Shots fired, Bro.

The Verdict

As we were playing, I said to Chris, I definitely have to get an XBox One. I actually said that I wanted to get an XBox One and a PS4 because I didn’t think that Dragonball was a cross platform title. I have no idea why I thought that. I think I’m just looking for a reason to spend money that I don’t have on things I don’t need. I’m a complicated individual.

So, now more than ever, I want to buy an XBox One. We can get Minecraft that allows for cross platform support. We can get Dragonball Fighterz and Chris made the point that the boys would really get a kick out of the game. He’s right. Dragonball Fighterz is selling consoles (at least to me) and I don’t know when the last time a fighting game made me want to own a console.

I’m sure anyone who wants to play the game already has done so. However, if you are like me and have somehow avoided both purchasing either and XBox One or PS4 and the game, then you need to go out and buy it right now. You will not be disappointed. Heck, the game has even made it to EVO already as Chris predicted that it probably would. At least for me, that is must see viewing.

Currently Playing…Dragonball FighterZ (PS4)

Well, if you read my ?Rapid Firea’? post from a couple of days ago then you know that I was eagerly awaiting my copy of Dragonball FighterZ. Turns out our local UPS terminal must be avid readers of this site because lo and behold, the game was delivered that night. I eagerly ripped opened the box and had the game in my PS4 before you could say a’?Gokua’?. I then received the familiar message that most PS4 owners have seen, a’?Not enough memorya’?. After the stream of expletives fell out of my mouth, I started the unpleasant task of finding items that I could delete. 35 minutes later, I was able to finally the start the game. Have I mentioned how much I love to play this game? Ya”know, the find and pick stuff to delete that you dona”t really want to delete game? Thanks to Sony for putting such HUGE hard drives on these things. Yes, Ia”m aware that I can go out and spend $60-$150 for an external hard drive but I shouldna”t have to after dropping 300 on the console! But I digress, this is about Dragonball Fighter Z and not Sony.

When I first fired it up I was a little disappointed that I had to setup an online username and character. Ia”m a pretty antisocial gamer and I wasna”t planning on spending ANY time online with it so this felt like a waste of time. After getting setup, you must choose a lobby to join. The maximum characters in a lobby is 64, so there might be times when you start up the game and you wona”t be allowed into that lobby because of too many players, so then you have to either choose another lobby or hit [Triangle] to go to an offline lobby, which is just you (Hoozah!). The lobby is essentially just an area that serves as a main menu for the game, so you can walk around to what modes you want to try out or hit [L2] to bring up a list of areas and you can just warp to it. After perusing the lobby for a while, I found that I didna”t mind it has much, yes there are other players running around, but unless you go into a tournament or the arena, you dona”t really interact with them.

After the playing the game for a couple of hours, I sent Shawn a text saying that while I might just be in the moment, this is the best fighter I have ever played. And most of the games that I play are fighters. After putting more time into the game, I can confirm that it *is* the best fighter Ia”ve played. The graphics are amazing, the combat is fast paced, the combos are really easy to perform, and if you can throw a fireball in Street Fighter, you can perform any super combo. No a’?hold back for 2 seconds, forward, back, down-right, forwarda’? nonsense in this game. It really keeps the fight flowing and after a match or two, I was performing 30+ hit combos. If you hit the heavy attack [Circle] you hit your opponent against the wall and they bounce off of it, hit [Circle] again and you perform a a’?Dragon Rusha’?, which means that you fly into the character to juggle them. The game does take skill though, you have to time those combos to keep them going. Dragonball FighterZ is the closest thing to Marvel vs Capcom 2 that Ia”ve played to date. MvC2 is usually my benchmark that I compare all other fighters to, but after many years, I have to say that ita”s been dethroned as far as overall gameplay goes. While similar, (both are 3 on 3 tag fighters with great gameplay mechanics), MvC2 has more than twice the amount of characters that DBZ has. I believe MvC2 has 56 characters, as opposed to DBZ having 21. That said, I found that I wasna”t bored with the character selection at all. Although, I did buy the a’?Day One Editiona’? which comes with a code for an additional 2 characters that you normally have to beat a’?Arcadea’? mode on hard to get. At this point I have played as all of the characters multiple times and Ia”m still figuring out new ways to chain combos together. Thata”s the thing with this game, ita”s easy to pick up and play, but only after putting in a good chunk of time was I able to see that while it looks simplistic, ita”s intricate under the surface.

I thought I was going to have buyera”s remorse after paying full price for this game, but I had been looking forward to it since E3 and just couldna”t help myself. Ia”m happy to report that I dona”t regret it all, this game is worth every penny. Ita”s an instant classic and the hype was real.

Buy It: If youa”re a fan of 2D fighters, crazy 3 on 3 battles, or just love stringing together those combos in fighting games.

Try It: No, just buy it. Ita”s worth owning.

Walk by it: If youa”re not into fighters, or more of a a’?realistica’? fighter fan (i.e Tekken, Soul Calibur, DOA).

Final Score:
Dragonball FighterZ: 10/10 (!)