Review #174: Dragon Ball Evolution

 Just what was I expecting?

 I'm a firm believer that if the gameplay is great, it doesn't matter how bad the game looks or sounds. Dragon Ball Evolution wants to puts that belief to the test, as it takes the gameplay from the Shin Budokai series but applies a new coat of paint based on the terrible, terrible movie. Dragon Ball Evolution is... quite a piece of work.

 Cutting to the chase, the game offers a Story Mode, Arcade Mode, Network Battling, Training, Mission and Survival. Right here, huge pet peeve of mine: No offline VS CPU mode, if you wanna battle specific CPU opponents, you gonna have to resort to the training mode. The Story Mode goes through the Movie's story, told via some very ugly traced character cut-outs that look nothing like the actors, I didn't stomach the entire movie, so I'm not sure just how faithful it is to the movie, but the script is terrible, turning Dragon Ball into an stereotypical American highschool soap opera. Getting an A or better rank on each "act" will unlock two bonus acts featuring a new storyline in which 'Neo Piccolo'(He introduces himself that way, but he is just Piccolo wearing a red cloak) comes to stir up some trouble, but is quickly offed by Goku. Again. Mission Mode works just like it did in Shin Budokai, it's a neat idea, but it doesn't explain you HOW to do what it asks you, "perform 4 dodges", but the only way to learn how to dodge is the instruction booklet. Survival is pretty self explanatory, but the roster is so small that just on my first 10 opponents I fought 5 Chi Chis and 3 Bulmas, while the next ten featured 3 Fu Lums, 2 Gokus and 2 Yamchas. Fun.

 Just as stated above, the game borrows Shin Budokai's engine, which means Aura, Aura Smash, Aura Shield, Pursuit Attacks are back and work just as well. Likewise, each character has a bunch of combos involving weak and strong attacks, alongside 3 Special moves that consume Ki and a Super Move that requires 5 Ki gauges. Gameplaywise it's just as good as Shin Budokai, the entire combo system is intact, as well as every nuance and technique. Which would be a good thing, if only the game wasn't so shamefully lazy. There's only 11 characters, and that's counting Neo Piccolo, and they had the gall to reuse animations. Off the top of my hat I can remember: Piccolo, Roshi and Gohan share one Special Move, Gohan and Roshi have the same walk animations, Piccolo and Gohan share the same square combos, Piccolo and Neo Piccolo only have a few different combos, mostly the ones that start with Square. They also pulled a Ubisoft, as it seems animating women was too expensive, which is why the three females(Mai, Chi Chi and Bulma) share the same walking animations. And did I mention they borrowed the Shin Budokai engine? This means it also borrows the long loading times.

 Graphics are... good, when looking at screenshots. I mean, character models are detailed, and they look sorta OKish when still, but every new animation, meaning not taken from Shin Budokai, is probably gonna look awkward. The female walk cycle, Yamcha's walk cycle, Goku's win pose, they all look very, very awkward. Music is alright, there wasn't a whole lot of though put behind it, but it works. As for the voices, I don't know if they got the cast from the movie, but it doesn't matter, voices can't save this game.

 Know what the saddest part about it is? They had 90% of the legwork done. All they had to do was reskin it, seriously, that was ALL they had to do to make an alright game. What, some of the original animations were too outlandish for the game? Didn't stop them from using the same dashes and Smash attacks. I understand that Shin Budokai Another Road has sorta gone up in price, but this, this isn't a good substitute. And even then, the PSP has so many other great fighting games(Darkstalkers 3, Dissidia, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Tekken, Soul Calibur, etc), why settle for this? I paid 4 bucks for game, so I don't really regret it, and technically, at its core, it ain't a terrible game, the Shin Budokai engine is really good, but when compared with the game that spawned it... it falls short in every single way.
 3.5 out of 10.