
	Platform Playstation 3 Genre Fighting Publisher Namco Bandai Developer Namco Bandai ESRB T (Teen) Released November 10, 2009

- Exceptional cel-shading

- Incredibly easy to lose perception on opponent - Characters become interchangeable - Fight system degrades down to who can counter more successfully

Review: Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans (DS) Review: Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo (Wii) Review: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (Wii)
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Dragon Ball: Raging Blast

Score: 6.0 / 10

With every iteration of the Dragon Ball franchise, we get an increase of the look and experience that the series’ fans come to expect. Dragon Ball: Raging Blast has done an spectacular job in recreating the atmosphere and cinematic moments but at the expense of the gameplay. The battle areas are designed to look massive in scale – they aren’t… especially when you find one of the clear walls to limit the size. That’s not to say you don’t have a huge space to fight in, but it’s just one more of those little things that take away from the whole show.

The 30-45 minute tutorial for the fighting system helps the would-be player make sense of the dense fighting system. Striking, dash attacks, counters, KI attacks and

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- Playstation 3 Game Reviews
- Fighting Game Reviews
- Games Published by Namco Bandai

et cetera are just methods for the player to try and buy enough time to build their own KI levels to explode their most powerful attacks.

Instead of the intense building that it would suggest, the game degrades into scrap, throw, slam into mountainside (make a nice opponent sized crater in the hillside) or

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whatever so that you can get a few moments to charge your KI. Once someone connects their power moves the fight usually mercifully ends. Most battles take anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes to resolve, and with the lack of variety in character dialogue you will soon be turning the sound off and playing other music instead. My most common mistake was to lose my lock on my opponent then to spend the next minute or so after getting thrown searching for them while they charge KI, and if you think that it couldn’t happen that often if you try harder, it still happened to me 2-3 times a fight. Not exactly my idea of fun.

For those more interested in seeing which story arc are being covered: the game has all the major arcs covered: the Saiyan arc, Namek, Frieza arc, the Androids, and the Majiin Buu arc. With 70+ characters thrown in the mix, there’s a whack ton of combinations to be explored. The What-If scenarios are quite entertaining – throwing some odd combinations at you to try out. Those who find that unlocking content and trying everything out to be most important will have much to explore and unlock with the large number of scenarios and challenges to meet.

All in all, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast is like a steak that sizzles and looks great but tastes as if they cooked all the flavor out in the pan.

- Tazman

(February 17, 2010)