Written by: Mark

 

 

 

For anyone who may have never heard of the Dragon Ball franchise it started way back in 1984 as a Japanese manga cartoon which quickly became an animated series two years later due to its popularity.

 

Now more than twenty five years later the franchise includes three different animated series, almost twenty feature films, trading card games, toys and video games.

 

As you can see the franchise can certainly be described as massive. With this in mind it goes without saying that it would be backed up by numerous video games which receive almost annual releases.

 

In this review we take a look at the latest game entitled "Dragon Ball: Raging Blast" on the Xbox 360 to see if this is a game worth playing or one released simply to cash in on the popularity of the Dragon Ball name.

 

 

Anyone who has experienced any for of a Dragon Ball animated show will no doubt be pretty impressed with the game which is presented well with characters looking almost identical to those in the cartoons. This sets the game off on a good footing and leads you to believe that you could be in for a real treat, However in reality what you get is a very mixed bag.

 

Let me start by saying that Dragon Ball: Raging Blast features some of the most colourful and garish visuals I have yet experienced on any console with everything presented in a very over the top fashion from character design, environments to the fast moving camera which sometimes struggles to keep pace with the rapid on screen combat.

 

Whilst the visuals appear incredibly colourful I personally found this to be a bit too much and meant that although I was sucked in at first I could not play the game for too long as I could imagine that the game could lead to headaches or nausea such is it’s vividness.

 

 

On top of the colours we have the in-game sound which I have to say is one of the loudest I have yet experienced with music added to bring tension and excitement to battles which in fairness it does pretty well but again gets too much too quickly. This is also a similar story with character voice acting and in battle sounds.

 

Admittedly this over the top style is how quite a few Japanese manga cartoons are presented however for it to successfully make the transition to video games may have benefited if it was toned down slightly.

 

Menus in the game are one of the highlights of the presentation as these give evidence to the wealth of game modes which include arcade, a massive story mode, online multiplayer and local matches and lead you to believe that the gameplay could become very competitive with the numerous other beat em up games on the market.

 

 

As previously eluded to Dragon Ball: Raging Blast is a one on one beat em up and it is not just in it’s presentation where the game differs from other titles in the genre as the action all takes place in a full 3d environment with options to use the whole fighting area both on the ground and in the air in addition to the interactive and destructive environments.

 

 

To be fair this is a pretty unique approach although I feel that it does not work as well as it probably should which is not helped by the aforementioned camera problems.