Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

So it’s a two-player side-scrolling beat ‘em up in the style of classic two-player side-scrolling beat ‘em ups. To make it special, WayForward has done a heckuva job leveraging the IP. Which, if you haven’t noticed, is the current animated Batman series that takes its cues from DC Comics’s 1960s Silver Age.

My son and I are blasting through the first “episode.” It has Batman and Robin rampaging through an improbably designed museum and cityscape, chasing an unknown cat-based villain. Robin says it’s Catwoman. Batman says it’s Catman. Robin says Batman is just saying that because he has a thing for her. These guys argue like this throughout the entire level.

Rather than just being arcade combat, it’s arcade combat with ongoing, entertaining voiceover. It’s because the game is trying to present itself like the cartoon, which is pretty cool. Even ran the show’s open (just in a highly compressed video codec, bleah.) When you perform a special attack, giant fullscreen animations of the characters play out. Guest-star heroes fly in for special screen-cleaning attacks.

I’ve read online that the game supports the Classic Controller, but the manual does not mention it and I don’t own one anyway because they’re stupid. What I do own is a houseful of GameCube Wavebirds and I can tell you that the game doesn’t support that.

So far, I’m loving the voice work and the hand-drawn character animation. There’s more then enough combat moves and apparently you can buy and upgrade new gadgets for Batman. I imagine if you were blown over by the recent Scott Pilgrim game, this would not make a bad runner-up. Of course, a cartoon Batman game for kids isn’t going to score you any nerd cred.