Now Playing: Dragon Ball Xenoverse

'Nother year, 'nother Dragon Ball game.

 There's only three constants every year in my gaming life: A) I will play a Fighting game, B) I will a RPG and C) I will play a Dragon Ball game. As I've mentioned countless times before, I'm not particularly fond of Dragon Ball as a franchise, but I've always been drawn towards its games, particularly its fighting games..

 It's probably due to the fact that no matter the console, you can always trust on Goku and his friends to make an appearance, and I always love seeing how they will re-envision these characters. As for my favorite... it's a three way toss up between Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension, Dragon Ball Z Densetsu and Super Dragon Ball Z, yet the one I've spent the most time in is, probably, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, go figure.

 That said, when it came to the PS2 games, I always favored the Budokai games over Budokai Tenkaichi, and when it came to PS3, Burst Limit was where it was at. It's due to the fact that between Spike's Budokai Tenkaichi/Raging Blast and Dimps' Budokai/Burst Limit, it's the former that resemble a traditional fighting game the most. And I really dig fighting games. That said, I was a bit worried about Xenoverse, as much as I trusted Dimps' previous efforts, their last anime fighting game was Saint Seiya - Brave Soldiers, which wasn't... very good.

 First thing I liked: Cha-la head cha-la, as soon as the remix started playing, I couldn't help but smile the whole way through. Cha-la Head Cha-la kicks butt. Well, it got better, on the surface, the fighting seems very satisfying. Landing blows feels good, and I'm liking the combo system, or what I understood of it so far, even if it seems a tad simple. And then there's the graphics, which not only look good on a technical level, but as a lover of all things colorful, I'm really diggin' the oversaturated color palette.

 Then there's the Story Mode. Believe it or not, I'm still not tired of replaying and replaying the DBZ storyline. It beat the crappy 'What ifs' they come up with, plus, I always hate it when adaptations mess with the source material, not to mean that I hate absolutely every change, if it's good, I can roll with it. That said... I wasn't sold on the idea of 'saving the timeline', but after clearing the first scenario... I think I could, potentially, get behind it. I'm gonna reserve full judgement until I finish it, but... It could've been yet another 'evil clones' what if, so there's that.

 As for miscellanea, I couldn't helpt but notice that the Makankosappo scene keeps getting more and more censored! Budokai 1 had a textured fleshy red hole on Goku and Raditz, Burst Limit turned it into a textureless black hole and now... now they've no physical proof of having being pierced by an energy beam. I don't really mind it though. Then there's the fact that as soon as the game starts, they kinda throw you into the wild without any tutorials, kinda ballsy in this day and age! The three fights are dead simple, so that you can try every button in the joystick and get a feel for the basics. There is a tutorial later in the game, but it's short and straight to the point, so no biggie.


 Basically, Xenoverse is badass.


 Oh, and by the by, if you didn't make your first a character a Saiyan... you've no soul.