Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

After spending weeks whining about how I had a hard time considering New Super Mario Bros Wii a good value at $50, I bought the game yesterday. The explanation is even worse, I suppose. I was expecting a heap of them on a display at my local Best Buy, and when I didn’t see the distinctive red box anywhere, I realized they must have sold out. It turns out someone had picked up a copy at some point and set it in the wrong place in the store, perhaps changing their mind, and when I picked that up I had a hard time setting it back down.

The handful of Best Buy coupons didn’t hurt either, nor did the insistence from my wife that she’d play the game with me.

Playing New Super Mario Bros Wii for a little while was fun, but did nothing to convince me the game had received $50 worth of attention from the developers. It wasn’t until I decided to take a break from a challenging stage in the second world to buy some gameplay videos at Peach’s castle using some of my big coins that I really got it. Check out the 1-3 Super Skills video to see what I’m talking about. The game of Hot Luigi the other 3 players play using their Yoshis is pretty amusing. See the video above.

The development time in this game went into the level design. While it lacks, as you will hear Fourhman point out in Aeropodcast 109, a number of standard functions we expect from our games nowadays, even from our Wii games, it boasts some of the most clever and creative platforming design I’ve seen.

The game feels just like a sequel to New Super Mario Bros DS, and that’s a good thing. They make great use of the system’s abilities (though so far, I’ve not seen anything that couldn’t happen on Gamecube) for such madness as rotating platforms, complete with anchored platforms and bricks (it’s hard to explain, but you’ll be surprised when you see it), hidden areas that you can’t see until you step into them… the levels really feel like they’re jam packed with stuff.

And man, is this game ever challenging. I breezed through NSMB DS when it came out years ago, then went back for the big coins, and never felt stuck. This game isn’t that hard because it’s very generous with the 1-ups, but I’ve only netted about 20 of them so far here in World 3, as opposed to the 99 I strolled around the DS game with most of the time. Yeah, this is more of a First 240 than a First 30.

The multiplayer is crazy, funny, and at times infuriating as you leap for a platform and bounce off someone’s head to your doom. There’s a curve there. If people won’t cooperate with you, you’re stuck. Add in the ability to pick someone up over your head à la Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers on NES, and it’s a winning formula for chaos.