Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3

When a publisher decides to release a game with a Japanese title in the UK, even though the genuine Japanese version has the infi nitely easier-to-comprehend Sparking Meteor title, in ENGLISH, one of our eyebrows scales our forehead while the other brow angles nosewards.

We spend the next 30 seconds in a Curb Your Enthusiasm-style suspicious interlude, inspecting and scrutinising the face of a publisher called Atari while it pretends not to know what it is that has raised our suspicions. Eventually, the mystery music fades and we say “Okay… Okay,” as we back away knowingly towards our Japanese copy of Sparking Meteor (if you will).

Of course, many Dragon Ball fans are Japan-loving anime enthusiasts for whom such Japanese words as Budokai and Tenkaichi spell ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’. (They actually mean ‘martial arts association’ and ‘best on earth’, respectively.) And it’s primarily to this audience that Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is aimed.

The game makes no excuses for this, mind, instead bombarding players with screens full of text-told background stories and character histories while interjecting battles with dialogue scenes, and always finding room for an overblown intro/segue to give still more Dragon Ball goodness to the DBZ massive. As a document that outlines the Dragon Ball Z universe, it’s weighty and impressive – even non-fans will be awed by how much obvious dedication has gone into Budokai Tenkaichi 3’s production.

But if we strip away its thick layers of anime coating, we can find only a competently produced 3D beat-‘em-up with a slightly weird style of gameplay. And that hasn’t changed since the first Budokai Tenkaichi. Characters still float-fly around ostensibly open environments, which are in fact bordered by invisible walls, and they still move at great speeds, perform stupendous attacks and take an age to defeat because of their inordinately large health bars (and we’re not talking about Trackers).

Control of these characters – and there are more than 160 of ‘em to play with – is fine, but the range of controller options is slightly confusing. You can play using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in combination, copying on-screen stance symbols to effectively perform the moves of your in-game character. Alternatively, you can ditch that method completely in favour of simpler – and, as far as we’re concerned, more effective – control via the natty Classic Controller or even a dusty old GameCube pad (we do love our wireless Wavebirds). It’s your choice.

And speaking of choices, Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (grrr!) has a whole stack of them for players to sort through. Story modes seen from the perspectives of various Dragon Ball Z mainstays, battle modes with variable rule sets, online two-player fights (see ‘On The Wire’ box for more details), offline multiplayer options for split-screen duels, a replay mode with which you can shoot, edit and view replays of your own awesomeness in battle, and more incentives in the form of player ranking and Easter Eggs than is healthy to consume. This game appears to have everything – and from a Dragon Ball Z fan’s perspective, it probably does have everything.

… continued