Introduction

The 2 Guys Gaming got together for the first time in months.A� 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.A� Whenever we do, we both say that we need to do it more often and then life gets in the way.A� 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.A� 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.A� It seemed much shorter and easier than when I was a teenager.A� it’s a game where you walk sideways and punch things.A� It’s not like we were playing 3 dimensional chess back then.A� Why did the game seem so difficult?A� Well, Chris and I didn’t have to plug quarters into the machine.A� 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.

We also did a Winchester draft (more on that in a couple of days) and played some of the new fighting game Dragonball Fighterz.A� Chris has raved about the game to me and he even wrote a review of the game last week.A� He was so excited about the game that I couldn’t wait to play it.A� We waited until the end of the night to play.A� 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.A� I had never played the game.A� 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.A� I was going in completely blind, so to speak.A� That made no difference.

The move scheme is, as Chris explained it, “If you can do a fireball motion, you are all set”.A� Because of that, I was pulling off crazy combos right out of the gate.A� Well, based on my previous experience in fighting games, they were crazy combos.A� 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.A� I even beat Chris in the first game.A� Beginner’s luck?

Then I beat him again, and a third time.A� 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.A� More on that in a bit.A� 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.A� Another time, Chris finished my guy off by throwing him threw 3 mountains, bringing the third one down on top of me.A� 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.A� It was called an ultimate devastation or something like that.A� It wasn’t quite a fatality like from Mortal Kombat.A� The camera panned back, the animation was a huge explosion, and then the words came across the screen.A� 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.A� He finally said, “I’ve never seen that happen before.”A� Mind you, he’s been playing the game about 2 hours a day for a week to this point.

The Bad

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

In addition, there aren’t that many characters to begin with.A� I mean, the character selection screen is full, but many of those characters are just alternate versions of the other characters.A� I think I counted 3 or 4 different Gokus and that might be low.A� Again, as a new entry into the Dragonball Z universe, maybe there just aren’t that many characters in the series.A� 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.A� Most notably, the entry animation when one of your characters gets knocked out gets old real fast because it never changes.A� The new character just flies in along with the opposing character and they punch each other’s fists.A� 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.

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.A� Other than the few minor nit picks I had for “The Bad” section, I have no complaints about this game.A� Certainly not anything that could possibly be elevated to “Ugly” status.

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

The Verdict

As we were playing, I said to Chris, I definitely have to get an XBox One.A� 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.A� I have no idea why I thought that.A� I think I’m just looking for a reason to spend money that I don’t have on things I don’t need.A� I’m a complicated individual.

So, now more than ever, I want to buy an XBox One.A� We can get Minecraft that allows for cross platform support.A� We can get Dragonball Fighterz and Chris made the point that the boys would really get a kick out of the game.A� He’s right.A� 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.A� 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.A� You will not be disappointed.A� Heck, the game has even made it to EVO already as Chris predicted that it probably would.A� At least for me, that is must see viewing.