Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

There have been many attempts in gaming history to merge gaming styles.  Some try to mix action with adventure, or turn based with real time strategy.  In some instances, the mixing of genres goes as well as peanut butter and chocolate, but at other times, we end up with oil and water.  Southpeak Games is mixing first person shooter action with a top down real time strategy in Raven Squad, and seems to pull it off the difficult feat.

Associate Producer explained to me that Raven Squad will allow players that they can play through Raven Squad either in the first person shooter mode or real time strategy, or mix up their style of gameplay however they would like.  The action can be switched on the fly at any time.  One minute you can be in real time strategy mode, commanding your units around the battlefield, the click a button and zoom down to the boots on the ground in full first person view, where you can run and gun as necessary.  There is no stutter in shifting modes and you are never penalized for playing in one mode or the other.  You are never forced to play in either mode at any time, allowing the game to play to two distinctly different audiences.

Raven Squad takes place in the jungles of the Amazon, with your controlling six mercenary units, divided up into two squads.  Your team ends up on the bad side of a mission going south and you have to fight your way out of the jungle, against an enemy that is at home in the rugged terrain.  The story sounds a bit boiler plate, but the gameplay in Raven Squad does seem to overcome the generic plot elements.  Each of your squad members can be controlled in first person mode, with each having a particular specialty.  You have a heavy weapons guy, a sniper unit and a demolitions unit I believe.  I might be off on that, but have not found a clarification as of yet.  The units have individual personalities, complete with unique backgrounds and stories. 

With all of this in mind, I jumped into a game with another one of the developers, who was playing co-op with me.  Yes, the full campaign can be played co-op with a friend via the Internet or System Link.  The first thing I had to try was the RTS to FPS transition.  Simply pressing a button transitioned me with a quick zoom to one of my squad members.  You can easily switch between members by using the left/right d-pad selector, while up/down will change you between squads if you are playing single player.

Using the RTS commands, it was easy enough to send members to directional waypoints on the map.  I also had the option to target enemies, and even using secondary attacks to hit objectives.  An example of this was having to use one of my squad members to blow open a way to get to a new point on the map.  At this point, I pressed the button to zoom down to an FPS perspective, so I could take on the enemy with my own skills.  FPS mechanics work very similarly to Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3 and will be very easy to grasp for most players.  Raven Squad seemed a bit forgiving it is auto-aim, but not overly generous.

With the combined mechanics of both an RTS and an FPS, Raven Squad looks to offer solid gameplay to two distinctly different gamers.  While some might look at it as a jack of all trades, master of none, Southpeak seems to have put in a lot of polish on Raven Squad to get the game running stable, while letting players have a lot of fun.  Look for Raven Squad on both PC and Xbox 360 in August 2009.