Belated Review: Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 for Wii
Overview: HOW CAN THIS BE? HIS POWER LEVEL IS OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAAND! Yep, the primal growling is back once again in the latest DBZ game to hit the stands. It's pretty simple on the face. Over the top fighting with craptons of characters in the Dragonball Z universe. But like the previous Tenkaichi game, it goes a bit further beyond your standard 3D fighter and expands your battle arena into giant sweeping landscapes. Plus, since it's on the Wii, you've got some unique controls to get a handle on. DBZ is a guilty pleasure of mine. You have to go into it knowing that it's hokey, campy, and basically the Japanese version of He-Man. I never tried the previous Tenkaichi game because the lack of traditional fighterness turned me off. But I've been interested in DBZBT2 ever since I heard about the Wii controls making you actually do the proper hand moves to fire of a Kamehameha. So how does the game stack up? Read on and find out. I'm not gonna tell you here in the opening part, duh!
Shininess: In most areas, this game is a slight step up in terms of visuals from the orignal Budokai games. The character models are a bit sharper and seem to be even a slightly bit better animated. All of the characters are true to their TV counterparts, even down to having several different version of some like Gohan (kid, teen, adult, Saiyaman). But one disappointment was the downgrading of the detail and fluidity of the giant over the top super moves. You still see an explosion about one-eighth the size of the planet from out in space, but it's much less animated and detailed. It cuts it down to just a few frames of animation and drops the polygon count waaaay down. I really have no idea why they did it and I don't think there's any excuse for it.
Of course, the entire American voice cast returns once again to record some new material. I swear, these guys must make more on residuals than the original Star Wars cast for all the new work they keep doing. I think they actually do re-record all their lines, grunts, and screams for each new version of these games. It's kind of nice that way, though. It shows that the people who make the games want to follow through with their effort in most areas.
Funness: That true-to-the-seriesness is very important for a game like DBZ with such a crazy rabid fanbase. If they play a DBZ game, they want it to feel authentic and really capture the experience because there really isn't a whole lot else to it. The story lines are pretty basic, but faithfully recreated in the game. But the main attraction is the fighting and the fighting and the fighting. The Tenkaichi games take the game out of a basic fighting arena with up close battles and moves them into the giant open mountain ranges and fields that anyone familiar with the series is used to. You don't start off a match toe to toe with your opponent. They're usually about a good 100 feet away or so. All movements are centric on your opponent, once you've found and locked on to them, and the view is kinda halfway over the shoulder, halfway from the side for the character you are controlling. It's pretty unique. You actually can purposely fly through mountains, smashing them to bits, in order to get up close to your opponent and land a punch. But you can stay as far away as you want the whole time as well with long range energy blasts and quick hard up close punches that will send your opponent flying backwards. The game boasts nearly 130 playable characters, which is friggin' insane for a fighting game. Practically everyone in the entire DBZ series who you ever saw fighting at all is in this game, most of them unlockable of course.
Playing this on the Wii gives it some pretty unique and fun controls. You still use the analog stick on the nunchuck to move around, but you actually have to move, shake, and flick the chuck around to be able to dash, dodge, fly, and jump. The Wiimote is used pretty simply for physical attacks (A button) and energy attacks (B button) but quickly gets complicated when you throw in blocking, where you have to actually put your guard up by pointing the thing upwards out of the screen area. And then you have the power moves where you replicate (most of the time) the movements of the characters to fire them off. To perform Goku's famous Kamehameha you have to charge up (which also replicates the feel by making you clamp down on the Z and B buttons, effectively making you clench your fists) move both your hands back from the screen and then forward again. It's quite a hoot and the novelty still hasn't worn off for me. Because of the unique controls of the Wii, there are lots of different combinations of moves and attacks that take some getting used to. The learning curve is pretty steep, taking me about an hour and a half to get through the "Basics" training mode, just to learn how to control my dude.
The game also features the return of pretty much all the other original modes, with training, tournaments, VS, and story. All are what you'd expect to find here, and they did a better job of the story mode on this than in Budokais 2 and 3. The game flows smoothly from one story point to another, giving you the opportunity to train up on other opponents and fly around the world in between crucial events if you care to. You can also customize your characters again, by finding and buying Z Items which can be equipped between battles to increase your strength, speed, etc. as well as have special effects such as draining your opponent's life bar into yours.
All in all, it is pretty much the definitive DBZ experience, but I also said that about Budokai 3, so we'll have to see where they take it from here.
Worthiness: If you're a DBZ fan, and you've got a Wii, this game is definitely for you. You will love flying around, smashing dudes faces in, and blowing up the countryside. The unique Wii controls give it an edge over the PS2 version, if you can't decide between which one.
If you're not a DBZ fan, I'd suggest you at least try it out at a friend's place once or twice just because it's such a unique fighting game experience. I doubt you'll want to buy it afterward, but you might enjoy it enough to play it more with your buddy despite the fact that you really don't like the DBZ universe.
What say you?!