Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Upon arriving home today, I was greeted by my little brother. “You’ve got a parcel! I think it’s a game! Open it! Open it!” After pushing him down the nearest flight of stairs, I opened the parcel, and found that yes, it was indeed a game, in fact, the game of the film of the television show of the radio series of the idea from the mind of Terminator-and-Aliens-directing James Cameron (who I think may still be talking at E3)! (ok, some of that’s not true) I opened it and popped it into my 360, and (after the break) you can find out how many smurfs I got so kill!

The answer to the first question (unfortunately) is none. Not only did I not get to kill any smurfs (go and watch the related South Park episode for some context to that joke), I didn’t get to kill very much of anything else either. Let’s start from the beginning. You choose what you want your avatar to look like from a selection of 12 male and female presets, but the differences are only cosmetic. Right after that, you start the game.

this is from the South Park episode, not the game

After a loading screen, there’s a cutscene showing you on some sort of starship, with your character talking to Sigourney Weaver on a holographic screen(for some reason) – there was no real context to the conversation, but never mind. After another loading screen, you’re greeted with a cutscene where an officer welcomes you onto a planet. What sort of a planet, I’m not quite sure, but never mind. After another loading screen, I finally get control of my character, but no fun yet, I’ve got to go and do some banal story progression which is rather bizarre, since the game seems to have been going out of it’s way not to explain the story to me. I run inside the base, and find this doctor guy I’m meant to talk to. After yet another loading screen, I’m ‘rewarded’ by a cutscene of my guy in his avatar body, which he stands up in, and then goes back out of, for no discernable reason.

Sorry, brief interlude. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of AVATAR (and I wasn’t, believe me), if you want to have any sort of understanding or give your actions any context, go and read the Wikipedia article on AVATAR, so you can find out what’s going on. Mind you, even then you won’t have much of an idea what’s going on. Sorry, back to the business at hand…

Not this Avatar

Oh yes, after another loading screen, you’re told to go and see Captain “Hey Einstein, I’m on your side” Falco which entails two more loading screens, an elevator ride and some more stupid exposition. Ok, just for a second, indulge my curiosity. Without reading back, how many loading screens were there? Two? Three? SIX! That is not a game! If I want Metal Gear Solid 4, I’ll go and play that, in the meantime, just let me play without having to watch stupid movies about characters I don’t care about! Now look what you’ve done! I’ve got italics all over the article!

here is a picture of him

After having to put up with this sort of nonsense for about 20 minutes(!) it was nice to be able to vent my frustration on the local viperwolves, which are, you guessed it, a blend of vipers and wolves. Annoyingly, the game just told me “Go on this turret”, without any indication a). where the turret was, b). how to get there, or c). how to get my shotgun (as I discovered, the only weapon worth a damn) and blast those viperwolves into little pieces. Unfortunately, I was robbed of the satisfaction, as Pandora (the planet you’re on, apparently, sorry if I failed to mention that, the game did as well) seems to suffer a unique phenomenon where anything which dies on the surface evaporates almost instantly. After this, I was told (after another liberal sprinkling of loading screens) to go and see a pilot to get taken… somewhere… I don’t know much more because after that, I stopped playing so I could write this. It seems like the games opens up (a bit) in a sort of Bioshock-like “it’s all one world, but there are separate maps” way.

To be honest, it’s not all bad. It looks quite nice. When you get close-up, you can sort of see the join lines, but as a whole, it’s a feast for the eyes. It’s bloom-and-bright-colours appearance is reminiscent of Halo 3, but it looks better that that (in my opinion). It also gives a feeling of immersion (sort of). The world feels very… fully realised. It seems like someone’s considered the dynamics of everything, the way that something is, and the ‘little details’ are there, like the way the Na’vi move relative to the humans.

Anyway, that’s it for the First Thirty, the review will be up once I’m done with the game. See you then!