Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

I’ve been a fan of Insomniac since its first Ratchet and Clank platformer on the PlayStation 2 won me over years ago, and when I heard they were making what turned out to be a well-reviewed launch title for the PlayStation 3, I was excited and convinced that it would be a high-quality game. The alternate history timeline intrigued me, even if the World War II visuals immediately gave it an uphill climb in my eyes. Why I still haven’t finished Resistance: Fall Of Man after six months with my PlayStation 3 is an exercise in abuse. Not me abusing my time or my PS3, but in me just not being able to hack the shooter using the normal difficulty setting. With very sparsely laid out checkpoints within the level, I frequently have to reload from a distant place from where I died in a fast and flailing struggle. The struggle is against the chimera, true, but not directly. For me the struggle is against what amount to clearly artificial barriers constructed to lengthen what turns out to be more classical shooter gameplay than the developers would probably admit. The fact that reloading from a checkpoint is extremely fast is the only solace I really have.

I spent some time this weekend banging my head against this game, and while I made it just one level further, I lost about 3 hours total in getting through one level and failing to make it through a second level. I get the sense that I’m not really near the end, and I also get the sense that I must be playing the game completely wrong if I’m frequently running short on ammunition in the face of larger numbers of chimeran alien forces. Since the only single-player game I’ve finished on the PS3 yet is Super Stardust HD, which really only restarts you on a harder difficulty level with no power-ups, I’m determined to go farther and finish up Resistance in the near future so I can put the game to rest and focus on newer fare.

What did you play this weekend?

Image source: the official RFOM site.