Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu is an
absolutely horrible game. Maybe instead of bothering to release new
games based on DBZ, Atari can just come to every DBZ fans house and
take $30 or $50 and punch us in the face or something. The Budokai games
are halfway decent, but every other game based on this franchise has
been an embarrassment. Taiketsu is one of the absolute worst games the
series has ever seen which is saying something because there have been
some incredibly bad Dragon Ball Z games. Fighting fans wont like it,
and DBZ fans wont like it, so who else is there? No one, thats who.
Unless you get a free copy, avoid this game at all costs.
There isnt any story to speak
of in Taiketsu, which is a shame. All you get are a handful of locations
and characters from the series and nothing else. Considering all we have
seen in the series, it seems strange that the characters would just get
together and fight for no reason, but that is all you do in Taiketsu.
There are a few unlockable items such as character bios, images, and
music, but there is really very little in Taiketsu that has anything to
do with the series it is based on, other than a few characters that only
sort of look like Goku, Vegeta, and all the rest.
The fighting engine in Taiketsu
is trash and makes the simplistic Budokai games look godly in
comparison. Each character only has a couple of combos and special moves
that are unique to them, and every character uses the same punches and
kicks and energy balls and everything else. In essence, the only
difference between the characters is the way they look. The hit
detection is completely broken and the result is some strange quirks in
the gameplay like characters occasionally passing straight through each
other or bouncing wildly away from each other if a character jumps into
the other one. Also, it is hard to know if your punches and kicks
actually connected and even the most powerful special moves and combos
do extremely small amounts of damage so fights tend to last a lot longer
than they should.
Taiketsus most heinous
offense towards the fighting game genre is that it openly encourages
button mashing as the way to win. The moves in the game are so easy to
pull off that mashing buttons is simply the fastest way to execute them
and actually win the match. There is a sky battle mode where both
characters jump into the air and exchange a flurry of punches and kicks,
but the only way to enter the mode is mash buttons and they only way to
win these sky battles is to, you guessed it, mash buttons. This is like
fighting games for dummies and anyone with a shred of skill should be
turned off by the gameplay within seconds of inserting the game into
their GBA.
The graphics and sound in
Taiketsu are lackluster at best. The pseudo 3D characters only look like
who they are supposed to if you really squint at them. The environments
also lack detail and only sort of look like what we have seen in the
series, but then again, it is usually pretty difficult to tell one
barren wasteland apart from the next. The animation of the characters is
choppy and looks really bad. Some of the special moves are seemingly too
much for the graphics engine to handle and there is lots of pixelation
and flickering and ugly sprite tearing. The sound is every bit as bad
and the music is generic 16-bit fighting game music and doesnt sound
like anything that has appeared in the series. It really makes you
wonder why so many licensed games appear on the GBA when so few of them
have anything to do with the license they are supposed to be
representing.
If you are absolutely
desperate to see some DBZ action on your GBA, check out the two Legacy
of Goku games instead because Taiketsu is horrible. This is without a
doubt one of the worst fighting games I have ever played. You are
actually encouraged to mash buttons, and that just isnt the way a
serious fighting game should fly. On top of all that, the characters all
play exactly the same way, there is a severe shortage of moves, the hit
detection is awful, and it simply is not fun to play this game. Dragon
Ball Z: Taiketsu is a bad game that will leave both DBZ fans and
hardcore fighting game fans disappointed. The only good things about it
are the slick looking box art and the Atari stickers that come with it.
Please, I beg of you, dont reward the complete lack of effort that went
into Taiketsu by buying it because of the license alone.
Eric Qualls (12/27/2003) |