Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Ryan Mattson and Chad Barron of Red Fly Studios were nice enough to take us through a guided tour of their upcoming title, Mushroom Men.  The title plays out as an action/platformer, using the standard layout of the Wiimote and nunchuck attachment.

If you are unfamiliar with the game up to this point, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars deals with the results of a green meteor, falling to Earth, dumping a green cloud of dust along the way.  While the dust did nothing to the human population, it gave mushroom and cacti sentience, while turning insects and animals into war-faring armies.  You play as Pax, a Bolete mushroom tribe member, who has been tasked with bringing back a new piece of the meteor to his colony to sustain their life.  Pax accidentally absorbed the last meteor during training, so his punishment is banishment to the outside world.

Upon starting up the presentation, Mushroom Men immediately impressed me with a large world, including faraway vistas, and lush plant details.  Looking up shows the fact you are still a small character in a larger world, as you see huge, looming structures around you, dwarfing the roots, and plants that you navigate through.  It gets even better as you walk through the game and see the human items that have become part of the landscape for the mushroom men and their foes.

The world of Mushroom Men is open and non-linear, allowing you to progress towards objectives in any way you choose.  If you go one way, you will take on an enemy with full power, but going another way, might give you a chance to weaken the enemy before confronting him.  This allows the player to progress in the game based on his type of gameplay.  It defintely rewards those that do want to explore with lots of extras including meteor chunks that boost your health abilities.

Combat is fairly straight foward, using the Wiimote waggle to perform attacks while moving with the nunchuck.  The sequence we watched showed Pax being tested by the Shiitake Mushroom clan, which could be compared to the Swiss.  They stay neutral, but they want to see if Pax is up to the task of continuing on his journey.  The Shiitake have a Japanese feel to them as there are five of them, each representative of an element, and each fight with a samurai like style.  Immediately, I noticed that there was no damage hud, or any hud whatsoever.  Damage is indicated by Pax’s mushroom cap.  As you take damage, you lose parts of your cap, exposing your brain.  It is a neat way to show damage, and a great visual cue to get you to find health. 

Enemy AI is also very aggressive to some degree in Mushroom Men.  While battling the first of the Shiitake Mushrooms, the enemy took a lot of damage and ran from the battle, to look for health.  It was a great mechanic, and gave a neat flight or fight responsiveness to the game. 

While battling throughout the world, you will also have the ability to collect items that can be used to create new weapons.  When you go to the weapons menu, you will see all the weapons, separated by type of weapon, and under each, you will have a scavenger list of items needed to make the weapon.  When you find all the items, you can make the weapon and use them.  You can only make the pre-determined weapons, but there are at least 20-30 weapons that you can make.  A couple of the weapon types we say in Mushroom Men were a pencil with a Jax at the end, which worked like an axe, or the matchstick with a razorblade, which made a flaming scythe-type weapon.  It is very intuitive and another unique game mechanic.

While melee weapons are nice, they are not the only way for you to fend for yourself in the world of Mushroom Men.  Pax has spore powers that he can use.  These powers are controlled via context icons.  If you can levetate something, a cloud like icon appears, but it you can stick to something, a hand icon appears.  It is very intuitive, and will automatically select the context that is best suited for the job, so you do not have to search through your inventory for the right power.

Music plays into Mushroom Men as well, due to a built in metronome timing system.  The music system was shown off in another level, when you had to solve a slider board puzzle.  As you correctly put pieces into place, new layers of the music were added to the music track.  As the battle above you raged on during this puzzle, the explosions and other ambient sounds timed into the music as well, making for a melodic experience.  Les Claypool, formerly of Primus fame (“My Name is Mud”, “DMV”) has created four distinctly different musical tracks, each with a unique feel to the level that you are in.

As the demo winded down, one more thing came to me, and it was funny that the developers had the same thoughts as I did while watching the final sequence of the demo, and that was the enemy rabbits that you fought.  If you have never watched it, do yourself a favor before this game comes out.  Watch a movie called Watership Down.  It will add so much more to the vision that the developers used for inspiration with these evil creatures.  Trust me on this one.

All in all, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is coming together to be a great, uniquely designed action/platformer, in the vein of Psychonauts, another greatly unique, visual feast.  the game is currently slated to ship this fall for the Nintendo Wii.  If you are looking for the complete story, the DS game, which we did not get to see, is a prequel to the Wii game, and shows the evolution of the mushroom men from non-sentient to sentient.  It is also slated for a fall 2008 release.  Thanks to Ryan and Chad from Red Fly Studios again for taking the time to show Aeropause and its readers Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.

Mushroom Men Fact Sheet