Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

I’d put it off long enough, thinking it would be just another shooter, but last night I scrolled down the XMB to the Wolfenstein demo. The game has been predicted by many to flop primarily because of the marketing power that isn’t behind it, despite very good reviews. The XMB icon itself didn’t excite me: Killzone 2 called and they want their glowing red eyes back. The title screen of a crashed WW2 plane had me grimacing. I never played World War II games — I like my shooters with a dose of sci-fi. Am I really going to play a demo for just another WW2 shooter?

Right from the start, though, the Wolfenstein demo sets itself apart from the riff-raff. The opening cut scene looks astonishingly good. You get the action-hero vibe right away and you know there are non-standard things coming when the medallion is introduced. The good things about this demo didn’t stop there, either.

Graphically this demo is really excellent with a surprisingly good style, and the demo kicks into gear with lots of action right away. The water effects, introduced in an underground escape tunnel, are really quite special, and the veil power visuals fit in surprisingly well with the style of the world as a whole.

After the first couple of firefights (yawn, use the machine gun emplacement to stop a wave of bad guys) you’re directed to blow up a special weapons train at the station you’re at (yawn, jump through open boxcars to cross platforms), and once you set the charge (yawn, set a bomb) and it goes off things get really interesting (hey, what’s that blue stuff?). Apparently some of the magical substance related to the medallion was aboard the train, and the explosion uncorks the crazy stuff in the game, crazy things like areas of low gravity.

Leaping through the larger rooms, dodging and shooting Nazis as they floated helplessly and exclaimed their shock at what was happening didn’t do what it would do in most other shooters — it didn’t make the game engine feel weaker or less immersive. Jumping around felt right, and was an immediate reminder of who I was dealing with here — this is ID Software’s engine and Raven Software in the driver’s seat, it seemed to tell me. They’re longtime shooter powerhouses, at least Raven was before its most recent studio changes — and it felt like it. It was fun to work through the low gravity areas, and take down Nazi goons with or without the occult/high tech particle cannon you pick up from a fallen enemy.

Picking up items gave an energetic, action-movie styled sound giving you that extra bit of audio candy reward for doing something that helps you along. No more static paper shuffling sound for picking up one of the scattered intelligence dossiers, you’re picking up secrets to help in the war, soldier! We’ll win this thing yet!

It all worked surprisingly well and easily hooked me into putting this game on my shopping radar. Give it a play if you haven’t yet, and tell us what you think.