Capcom Fighting Evolution Review

Ever wondered who would win in a match between Street Fighter III's fearsome near-naked muscleman, Urien, and DarkStalkers' frisky near-naked cat girl, Felicia? No? At any rate, the answer to this and many other obscure fighting-game crossover-match questions may be found in Capcom Fighting Evolution. This is a competent product, offering a fair variety of characters and the responsive controls you'd expect from a Capcom fighting game. But it also feels like a relic, with its bare-bones set of options and decided lack of distinguishing features. The game is clearly best suited for hardcore fans of Capcom's fighting games, who might enjoy exploring some of the nuances here but probably won't find much reason to keep coming back. At least this version offers online play through Xbox Live to make up for the fact that it's hitting shelves half a year later than the otherwise identical PS2 version.

Capcom Fighting Evolution is essentially a typical one-on-one 2D fighting game, in which you compete with either another player or a computer-controlled opponent in best-of-three-round martial art matches. Purists will appreciate that it features the classic Street Fighter-style six-button control scheme. The game's main twist is that, instead of choosing just one fighter per match, you choose two. This implies some sort of a tag-team fighting system, as in Capcom's "Versus" games, but Capcom Fighting Evolution isn't that complex. You pick two characters only, so you can optionally alternate characters between rounds. So, for example, you might form a team consisting of Zangief the pro wrestler and Demitri the vampire, reserving the latter for use against pesky fireball throwers like Ryu, while letting the former and his signature spinning pile driver do most of the work. Since you decide which character to use in each round, you don't even have to use both of your selected fighters. As such, Capcom Fighting Evolution's system is rather simple, but nonetheless marginally different from that of most other fighting games, which makes it interesting.

In recent years, some of Capcom's fighting games have asked you to choose between some esoteric fighting systems in addition to choosing your characters. Capcom Fighting Evolution also features different systems, but these are dependent on the characters you choose and the games from which they come. This is the game's other twist. For example, if you choose Street Fighter III's buffed-up brawler, Alex, you'll be able to parry incoming attacks by tapping forward on the D pad at the last possible instant, since all Street Fighter III characters could parry in this fashion. Or, if you play as Street Fighter Alpha's ninjutsu master, Guy, you'll be able to use alpha counters to immediately follow up a blocked attack with another strike.

These different fighting systems also govern the respective characters' supermoves. Some types of characters can use their supermoves more quickly, while other characters' supers are more powerful, and stuff like that. There's not that drastic of a difference from one fighting system to the next, but the subtle differences between them do give the game some depth. It helps to some extent that many of the fighters have been at least slightly tweaked since you last saw them. For instance, the Street Fighter III characters have access to multiple supermoves during a match, whereas in all previous versions of Street Fighter III, you were forced to choose a single supermove prior to each match. Nevertheless, the balance is still pretty suspect, as there seems to be no one in this game that a good Ryu or Zangief couldn't thrash.

The roster includes about two dozen different characters, mostly hailing from five different Capcom fighting games, including Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter III, DarkStalkers, and the obscure Red Earth, also known as Warzard. Capcom Fighting Evolution could have distinguished itself by throwing together more than just a handful of characters from each game, but it failed to take advantage of this opportunity. As a result, if you're a Capcom fan, you'll instantly be disappointed by the "sampler" selections from each game, since some, if not most, of your personal favorite fighters inevitably didn't make the cut.

The cast itself is a rather strange one. You have your obvious inclusions like Ryu and Guile, but you also have some strange picks like DarkStalkers' wacky mummy, Anakaris, and Street Fighter Alpha's elegantly dressed Rose. There's also Ingrid, an original character who looks a lot like Street Fighter Alpha's schoolgirls, Sakura and Karin. The entire cast of Red Earth sticks out most of all, especially Hauzer, a huge screen-filling dinosaur. The Red Earth characters don't really fit in with the game's assorted martial artists, but they certainly look good, since Red Earth was Capcom's first game using the technology that subsequently powered the much-better-known Street Fighter III. Then again, these smoothly animated characters clash significantly with the relatively crude-looking cast from Street Fighter Alpha. Since almost all the character artwork here (as well as the voice work) is recycled from one old fighting game or another, Capcom Fighting Evolution feels like a mishmash of different, old fighting games. That's exactly what it is, in fact.

Capcom Fighting Evolution has a bare minimum of modes of play. There's an arcade mode, a versus mode for two players, a training mode for practicing your moves, Xbox Live mode, and that's it. You can adjust some basic options and unlock some hidden characters and other extras by repeatedly finishing the arcade mode, but there's no survival mode or color-edit mode, or any of the other stuff now found in most 2D fighting games. Xbox Live support works as you'd expect, letting you tweak a small number of different options when searching for matches, and conveniently offering you an at-a-glance look at how many matches are currently available (don't expect a lot of competition online). Of course, relatively lag-free online fighting such as this is no longer inherently novel as it once was, since several superior Live-enabled fighting games have long since been available at a low price. Capcom Fighting Evolution at least features some original background artwork, most of which is brimming with cameo appearances by many characters you'll wish were actually playable. Furthermore, the game includes some nicely done comic book-style ending sequences for all its characters. So, as pure fan service to Capcom's loyalists, Capcom Fighting Evolution isn't bad. However, it's also got a lame announcer and a new soundtrack consisting of some forgettable rock music.

Five years ago, Capcom Fighting Evolution probably would have been a great game, especially with online play thrown in. It does a decent job of throwing together a bunch of different characters into the mix, and letting them take advantage of their respective games' specific play mechanics. It also plays fine and looks good. At the same time, Capcom Fighting Evolution is the umpteenth game to recycle these same graphics, sounds, and mechanics, so unless you're dying to experience some of the strange matchups that are possible here, you could just as well go back to playing whichever games all these fighters hailed from.

Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Review

How does $20 sound for a practically arcade-perfect version of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection? It's a pretty good deal, and it's going on now on the PlayStation 3. The game is now available as a downloadable product, which makes a good deal even better. While the arcade-port-like nature of it means that you won't get any of the weird extra modes you'd expect from Tekken on a home console, you will get a rock-solid fighting game that also looks great.

This is a port of Dark Resurrection, which is the same Tekken 5 expansion that appeared on the PSP last year. That means you'll get Lili and Dragunov, the two all-new characters that made their first appearance in DR, as well as the returning Armor King. As a bonus, you can unlock Jinpachi, the game's final boss, as a playable character in the PS3 version. He's an interesting addition but not the most exciting character to play with. Of course, you also get the rest of the game's large roster, including Paul, Kazuya, Heihachi, Nina, Law, and so on.

While you won't get bowling, volleyball, or a Tekken Force minigame, you will get ghost mode in Dark Resurrection. Unlike the arcade mode, which puts you up against a handful of fighters and then sends you to the boss fight, ghost mode is meant to replicate the experience of taking on multiple challengers in arcades. You'll continually fight different characters that are governed by different artificial intelligence profiles. So you'll encounter beginning-level Baeks that are easy to beat, but the higher-level Baek fighters know how to use his combos properly and even know a few key juggles. This goes a long way to making them feel more like real human beings, since they all fight differently. This variety keeps the game interesting as a single-player game, which many fighting games have trouble with. Of course, it's still no substitute for actually fighting a real person, which you can do locally. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have any online support, but given the budget price tag, that makes sense.

As you play, you'll earn currency that you can spend customizing the characters' different costumes, much like you can in Virtua Fighter 5 and in the last couple of Tekken games. You can purchase new colors for their outfits, new hair styles, or additional little trinkets, like eye patches. You can also spend your money to purchase the ending movies for the new characters or concept art. Interestingly, Namco has kept the file size of the download a little lower than it would be otherwise by not offering these videos and images as part of the main download. When you go into the gallery menu, the game hits a server and returns a list of downloadable items. You pay a chunk of your in-game money, and it downloads the appropriate file. It's a slick idea, though at 500MB-plus, it's hard to call this a "small" download by any metric.

Graphically, the game follows the look of the arcade game, but it's been outfitted to run in 1080p. If you've got a TV capable of that resolution and are running over an HDMI cable, the game looks incredibly sharp--almost too sharp, in spots, as it'll reveal an ugly texture here and there. It's a great-looking game, overall, especially for a downloadable product, but as it's meant to look like the arcade version, you do get the impression that a Tekken game built from the ground up for the PS3 could look quite a bit better. The game also contains all the same sound effects and music from the arcade game. Tekken has always had hard-hitting sound effects, and they still work just fine here.

Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection makes a great case for digital distribution. Here's a game that might not be the newest game in town, but by clocking in at a budget price and not coming on a Blu-ray disc, it stands out and delivers on the potential of this sort of game-delivery platform. But forget all that nonsense. The bottom line is that Dark Resurrection is a fantastic fighting game, and it's especially sweet if you have one or more Tekken players nearby that'll get into the versus mode with you.

Legend of the Dragon Review

Legend of the Dragon is a fighting game from Game Factory that's based on a cartoon that currently airs on Toon Disney as part of its Jetix programming block. It's about a pair of 15-year-old twins, Ang and Ling, who are on opposite sides of a martial-arts-themed conflict involving humans that can transform into beastlike creatures. The fighting in this game is uniformly terrible, giving you the feeling that the product was constructed as a licensing tie-in first and a game second, but the ugly graphics and lack of character speech mean that this probably won't do much for fans of the show either, making it a failure from every angle.

The fighting is stripped down, with only one punch and one kick button and very basic combos that string those two attacks together. While you can push in a direction to execute different punches and kicks, you don't have any special moves in your human form. As in most modern fighting games, as you fight, a meter fills up with energy. Once it crosses a certain threshold, you can transform into your character's guardian form. For the main characters, the forms are largely human still, just armored. Others turn into decidedly snakelike, or ratlike, people, and so on down the line. Your basic abilities don't change when you're transformed--you can still attack, and the game still plays like a bad 2D fighter with 3D ring movement buttons. But you can also use your power meter when transformed to execute three different special attacks that make the game feel like it's trying to ape the Dragon Ball Z Budokai series. One attack launches a DBZ-like energy beam at your opponent, and at that point, a button-mashing frenzy breaks out, which either causes more damage or nullifies the attack, depending on which player can mash faster. Another special attack has the player enter six button presses or controller motions at random. If the opposing player can memorize the string and enter part of it, that player will block the incoming attack. The third attack launches a series of fireballs in a rhythmic fashion, and the defending player can dodge these with well-timed button presses or controller waves. Unfortunately, these attacks are identical for every fighter in the game.

In addition to a stock of standard fighting modes, like survival and practice, there's a quest mode, where you move Ang or Ling around a map screen as though it were some kind of board game. There are temples at several spots on the map, and at each temple, there's a challenge for you to complete. The game tries to get clever here and change things up by giving you stipulations for each fight, like in Soul Calibur's quest mode. So some fights have time restrictions, others can be won only with specific attacks, and some fighters are only susceptible to combos. If any part of the fighting were even remotely enjoyable, this might provide an interesting change of pace. But it only manages to frustrate, because it's very easy to knock opponents out of the ring accidentally, which will lose the fight for you if you needed to do something else to your foe.

Graphically, Legend of the Dragon has bland visuals, with a generic cel-shaded look and weak animation that makes all the characters look bad. The backgrounds are also ugly and plain, though the smaller screen of the PSP makes this version look a little cleaner than the PS2 and Wii versions. Because the game is based on an animated series, you'd hope for some form of voice acting. But other than the typical fighting game grunts and a few very short voice clips, it plods on in silence, using text to convey the quest mode's nonstory.

Because of the game's dull fighting system that doesn't play well against the computer-controlled opponents or against a live human being, it seems almost impossible to have fun with Legend of the Dragon. When you factor in the total lack of detail in the attempt to mimic the cartoon's look and feel, you're left with a game that even diehard fans of the relatively obscure cartoon will probably hate. Do yourself a favor and keep your distance.

As game sales are beginning to surpass ticket sales, the movie industry is playing an increasing role in our video games. A popular film release is often now accompanied by a simultaneous, multiplatform game launch. The X-Men's triumphant return to the big screen was, in my mind, marred only by the arrival of the breathtakingly mediocre X2: Wolverine's Revenge in stores everywhere. So, having played through Revenge, I was a bit worried while loading up X2: Battle on my BREW-enabled T720. Despite the different genre and platform of Battle, I was afraid the superhero game curse might doom the title before it had a chance. Fortunately, my fears were somewhat assuaged.

X2: Battle lets you play as any of three mutant heroes: Wolverine, Storm, or Nightcrawler. Each character comes complete with a poorly drawn character sketch and a slightly customized plot recounted through conversations with the estimable Professor Xavier. Although the slap-dash libretto of this grand opus feels like an afterthought, it does feature a loose movie tie-in.

Apparently, Stryker is using a mind-control serum to dominate the will of mutants everywhere. Kurt Wagner, alias Nightcrawler, is the first to succumb, since he's furry and weak-willed; however, no mutant, regardless of body hair amount, is safe. His activities have turned your comrades-at-arms against you, forcing you to fight them off in several richly detailed stages. Eventually, you work your way up to fighting Magneto, who has to be prevented from killing Stryker for some reason. This confused me, since I thought that killing him was the goal of the game.

Really, though, it hardly matters, since you'll forget about Battle's lackluster plot entirely when you see its gorgeous graphics. The character sprites are huge and beautiful. The game's lush environments serve as exquisite backdrops to your skirmishes, each vaguely relevant to whatever the heck is going on in the plot. The first stage, for example, is set outside the White House, where the president reportedly suffered a mutant attack.

Perhaps X2: Battle's most striking feature is its incredibly simplistic control. Doing away with such conventions as separate attack buttons, TKO Software has opted to integrate all the fighting commands into the directional pad. The result is horrendous. The forward key attacks your assailant, so long as you're right next to him. Otherwise it, well, moves you forward. This necessitates some awkward, Verizon-commerical-esque guesswork on the part of the player: "Can I hit him now...can I hit him now? Good." Aerial and crouching attacks are available, in addition to your standard head-on maneuver, but they're difficult to pull off and are ultimately unrewarding. In order to perform a crouch attack, for example, you press the down key, which makes your character sit down. Then, you have to wait for your opponent to get close enough to hit, since it's impossible to move while crouching. In the end, the most effective strategy is just to attack constantly, perhaps throwing a few blocks in there for good measure.

The gameplay's only saving grace is the cool, character-specific special moves that can be achieved by charging your power meter. The power meter gains a little bit of charge every time you hit your opponent. If he hits you, though, his meter will rise and yours will fall. This makes for a sort of special move tug-of-war, which adds to the competition. If you're lucky enough to charge up your meter all the way, it'll start flashing. When that happens, you can press the Select key to perform a wicked special move. The special move animations are definitely the highlight of the game.

Easy on the eyes but hard on the hands, Battle has some great strengths and some crippling weaknesses. The determining factor in how much you enjoy the game will be fandom. If you love the X-Men, you'll be able to overlook some crappy control to play as your favorite heroes. If you feel no special connection with the characters, however, you might find King of Fighters, which has a superior combat system, to be a better buy.

Guilty Gear Isuka Review

Nearly two years ago, Sammy Studios released Guilty Gear X2 for the PlayStation 2, and it quickly became one of the system's defining 2D fighting games. The memorable anime-style character designs, completely off-the-wall special moves, and surprisingly deep gameplay made Guilty Gear X2 great, and proved that a company other than Capcom or SNK could make a solid 2D fighter. Now the series is back with Guilty Gear Isuka, a game that features its predecessor's familiar characters and play mechanics, but focuses on four-player simultaneous battles instead of conventional one-on-one fights. The game runs well even with four colorful characters going at it at once, but the new free-for-all style of Guilty Gear is, at best, different--not better. Meanwhile, Guilty Gear Isuka overlooks the genre's recent forays into online play, which reduces its appeal only to those living in close proximity to several other hardcore Guilty Gear fans.

Although Guilty Gear Isuka supports up to four players simultaneously (you'll need a multitap to take advantage of this feature), like most any other fighting game, it allows you to play solo or with just one another player. In fact, it's possible to pit from two to four characters in any combination; one-on-one, two-on-one, three-on-one, two-on-two, and free-for-all matches for three or four players are all possible. You can also substitute in computer-controlled players as you see fit. Two-on-one and three-on-one matches aren't as unbalanced as you might expect, since the solo player gets more health to work with to offset the other team's greater numbers. What's more, players on the same side may accidentally hit one another while trying to attack their opponents, though they can also coordinate to get on opposite sides of one of their victims and bash him or her back and forth like a tennis ball.

The multicharacter dynamic of Guilty Gear Isuka certainly changes the feel of the game, making Guilty Gear X2's already fast-paced and hectic action even more so...practically to a breaking point. In multicharacter matches, the action can certainly be pretty fun in the way that playing just about any fast-paced game with a group of friends can be fun, but it also moves at such a breakneck speed and happens so spontaneously that it winds up feeling ultimately hollower than its one-on-one predecessor.

Guilty Gear Isuka's multicharacter fighting system is not the first of its kind. SNK's very first Fatal Fury game from 1991 let two characters pound on an opponent, and Capcom later put in a better implementation of such a system in its Street Fighter Alpha games' "dramatic battle" mode. The difference is in these past games, the multicharacter gameplay was an extra feature, rather than the focus. In Guilty Gear Isuka, you can play a conventional one-on-one fight, but even these matches will be governed by the peculiar rules of the multicharacter battles that are emphasized here.

The strangest thing about how Guilty Gear Isuka plays in comparison to other 2D fighting games is that your character won't automatically turn around--so if the opponent gets behind you, you'll need to press R1 (by default) to turn to face him. This is completely disconcerting at first and remains uncomfortable for a little while, but eventually you'll get used to it. As you might expect, it becomes central to the gameplay one way or another--faster characters can now viably try to attack their opponents from behind.

In another nod to Fatal Fury, Guilty Gear Isuka's action takes place on two different planes--a foreground level and a background level. Characters can jump to the opposite plane and perform certain attacks that can hit opponents on opposite planes, but for the most part, your moves will only hit characters on the same plane that you are on. This theoretically makes multicharacter matches a bit more manageable, but in practice, it contributes to the chaos. It can be difficult to tell when a character is in the foreground or in the background, and the action gets especially messy when you've got four different characters and their crazy moves are all overlapping with one another. A long-standing issue with the Guilty Gear series has been that its graphical style, while great looking, isn't terribly clear. Rather than address this point, the game makes it harder than ever to tell just what the heck is going on. Unless you're an expert at this series and are highly familiar with all the moves and characters, you'll be bewildered by what goes on in a typical match here.

Punch Time Explosion doesn't just take inspiration from Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series. Rather, it's as if Dexter, Samurai Jack, and a bunch of their Cartoon Network buddies staged an invasion to oust Mario, Link, and the rest of the Smash Bros. gang from the land of zany multiplayer brawlers and claim the territory as their own. The Cartoon Network crew makes a spirited effort, and they give Punch Time Explosion plenty of personality. But beneath the superficial and short-lived pleasure of seeing Blossom and Ben Tennyson battle each other in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is a game that's shallow in multiplayer and frustrating when played alone.

Like the games that it imitates, Punch Time Explosion is a fighting-focused party game in which up to four characters clobber each other on a 2D plane. There are a total of 18 playable characters, if you count duos like Billy and Mandy, which can only be played together, as a single character. As you take damage, a number displayed as a percentage increases, and the higher this number gets, the farther you're liable to go flying when hit. You lose a life when you're knocked from the stage or fall from it. Each character has standard attacks and a number of signature moves at his or her disposal, as well as a special attack that can be performed once a meter is full. A variety of weapons--wrenches, flyswatters, magic wands, and so forth--spawn frequently, and if you're quick enough to grab them before an opponent does, they can significantly increase your power. In addition, special items show up that, when collected, summon non-playable Cartoon Network characters like Johnny Bravo and Mandark to lend you a hand for a short time. The playable characters exude all the charm of their TV selves; Flapjack's absent-minded, goofy grin is infectious, and Buttercup's glare tells you she means business. But a small number of voice samples that repeat much too frequently make the game's sound design grate; hearing Ben Tennyson exclaim "I should have picked a flying alien!" for the umpteenth time as he's sent soaring off the field in defeat may push you to turn the voices off altogether.

The environments in which you do battle contribute to the craziness. One arena has you fighting on the rooftops of Townsville while a giant robot smashes the buildings under your feet. Another finds you in the mouth of a giant whale who sometimes belches huge amounts of water and dead fish into the sea, threatening to expunge you as well. The result of all this is a chaotic game in which the unpredictability and zaniness generate some short-term fun as you discover what happens on the various stages and what the various items and supporting characters do. But whether you're playing against CPU opponents or friends, this chaos also makes it difficult to take much satisfaction in victory; so much happens all the time that the ultimate outcome seems as dependent on chance as on skill. You can opt to play with fewer items or no items at all, but stripping away these distractions only makes it more clear that the underlying combat is shallow and that attacks have no sense of impact. Characters tend to come together and dish out their attacks willy-nilly until one is sent flying.

Punch Time Explosion is at its best in Story mode, but even here it has some serious problems. An evil force is corrupting the universes of numerous Cartoon Network characters, providing a fine excuse for the Powerpuff Girls, Numbuh One, Dexter, and a bunch of other CN stars to band together and battle evil. The enthusiastic and funny narration by a CN voice-over guy who just wanted to relax and enjoy some cartoons on his day off lends the story an authentic Cartoon Network soul and prevents the adventure from feeling like a hollow licensed cash-in. Platforming takes priority over punching here, and bounding across chasms and over hazards with each character's double jump is pleasant enough. Or at least it usually is; some sections crank up the challenge in ways that only result in frustration. For instance, at one point you must make your way across a series of floating barrels that have a tendency to spin when you land on them, making it overly difficult to get your footing and make the leap to the next barrel. What makes this and situations like it doubly irritating is that losing all of your lives often results in a significant setback, requiring you to repeat minutes of easy gameplay to get back to the tricky bit.

Your side-scrolling escapades are also frequently put on hold when you're required to defeat a number of small-time bad guys or a single, more powerful cartoon character. These turn out to be some of the worst moments of Punch Time Explosion's Story mode, since they can almost always be won by repeating a specific signature move over and over. On occasion, you're required to protect a character as you defeat 25 enemies, a situation that encourages you to rely on this tedious but effective approach to knock the bad guys away from the clueless and vulnerable character you must keep safe. Other diversions also crop up from time to time in the form of basic first-person on-rails shooting sequences, mine cart levels, and the like, and these are more welcome, preventing the platforming from growing stale.

Punch Time Explosion supports local wireless multiplayer for up to four players. Unfortunately, there's no online support, so unless you have a bunch of friends close by who own the game, your opportunities for full-featured four-player mayhem are limited. There is a download play option that lets up to four duke it out with a single cartridge, though this option limits the number of characters and has only one stage on which to do battle. Frustratingly, over half of the game's 18 playable characters and 20 battle stages are locked at the start, so there's a good chance you'll need to sink in some time before being able to beat up your friends with your favorite character or in your favorite Cartoon Network locale. Since the characters are the game's greatest asset, it's disappointing that so many of them are unavailable at the start. Punch Time Explosion has a host of cool characters, but without the support of exciting gameplay, their presence can only benefit the game so much. Unfortunately, like a cartoon starring your favorite superhero that doesn't make the most of his powers and personality, Punch Time Explosion leaves you disappointed.

Back in 1995, Battle Arena Toshinden was a shining example of 32-bit gaming and helped launch the PlayStation. It was a good game, but it suffered from repetitive and eventually tiresome gameplay. When Toshinden 2 came along, everyone was expecting an amazing sequel. Unfortunately what they received was a rehash with slightly better graphics and the same boring gameplay. Toshinden 3 is what Toshinden 2 should have been - an improved version of the original, with a ton of new characters and improved play mechanics.

The gameplay and combo systems are the most obvious beneficiaries of the overhaul. For starters, fights only last one round, and there is no time limit. Each player's life bar has been extended though, so battles last roughly the same amount of time as most fighting games, although here most of that time is spent fighting. Aside from each player's special moves, players can also call upon a super-move (an overdrive or soul bomb) that will rock their opponent with multi-hit combinations (which look cool despite their simple execution).

The graphics have also been touched-up nicely. Each player looks good and moves well, and the arena backgrounds are also impressive. In this version, fights take place in the same type of arenas as the previous games, but they're completely enclosed, allowing you to slam enemies into walls as well as blasting them into the ceiling. Toshinden 3 also offers a choice of graphics mode. The game's default mode is 30 frames per second, which looks great but moves a bit sluggishly. Gameplay fiends will want to sacrifice a bit of the graphical shine (and the associated texture mapping) for speed and control by switching over to 60 frames per second.

Toshinden 3 continues the trend started by Tekken 2 with characters that unlock as you progress through the game. While only fourteen characters can be selected when the game starts, players can unlock hidden characters and bosses by finishing the game with different characters (until all 32 characters are available). All the characters from the previous Toshinden games are included, except for a conspicuously missing Fo Fai. Replacing Fo is Bayhou, a crazy monkey with the same fighting style. In another parallel to Tekken 2, Battle Arena Toshinden 3 also allows players to try out new combos and see how much damage they do in a practice mode.

Toshinden 3 provides all of the upgrades that the series needed to get back on its feet. It adds plenty of intriguing new features, without losing the better aspects of the previous games. If you were one of the many who thought Toshinden was neat, but far too dull, this game may have what it takes to turn your viewpoint around.

Given the poor representation of Capcom's Vampire series in the US (known here as Darkstalkers), its fans would no doubt appreciate the release of a compilation intended for play on a platform capable of pushing the required sprites. As it happens, Capcom has released such a product, albeit only in Japan, much to the chagrin of any American fan who isn't import savvy. Titled Vampire Chronicles, the game combines features from every installment of DarkStalkers (including Vampire Hunter 2 and Dark Savior 2, neither of which saw a stateside release) into one rich package, featuring a plethora of fighting modes, a horde of playable characters, and all the requisite modes. What's more, Japanese players can go head-to-head online via Capcom's Matching Service network.

What makes this product stand out as a plausible import is its sheer level of completeness. North American gamers have not been treated to an arcade-perfect version of DarkStalkers, and importing Vampire Chronicles is the best way to make up for it. The PlayStation ports of DarkStalkers and DarkStalkers 3 compromised many of the game's lush animations and featured grueling load times. Only those lucky enough to have imported the Saturn version of Vampire Savior were treated to a competent translation, due mostly the console's 4MB RAM cartridge, which was required to play the game.

Aside from the troubles involved with the actual procurement of the game (which is only available through mail order, even in Japan), importers will find Vampire Chronicles an easy, painless import to play, as most of the pertinent lists and options are in English. And indulging in the stylish, arcade-perfect graphics native to the compilation is a pleasure indeed. Those who've played any game in the Darkstalkers series will feel right at home with Vampire Chronicles. Essentially, the game is built around Street Fighter mechanics, with the appropriate button layout and supercombo systems. The game allows you to choose which combo system you want to use (Vampire mode, Hunter mode, and Savior mode, after the series' titles), which affect how the power gauge, supercombos, and life bar behave. Furthermore, you can tune your character's fighting style by selecting one of four modes: Vampire type, Hunter type, Savior type, and Savior 2 type. Corresponding to the appropriate games in the series, the various types affect your character's individual attacks and supermoves/combos. Interestingly enough, characters that weren't present in earlier games in the series are allowed to choose fighting styles from those games.

Visually, Vampire Chronicles is perfect, and the only limitations present are those that the game inherited from the CPS II technology on which it was born. The series' character designs have widely been regarded as Capcom's most lively and thoughtful. Brought to life by countless, lovingly crafted elements present in their animations, the characters in motion are as terrific, at times, as they are amusing. For a bona fide fan of the series, Vampire Chronicles is a prudent import in terms of its value as a catalogue of visual art alone.

Sadly, Vampire Chronicles is fetching upward of US$100 at the few secondary outlets that offer it. Needless to say, only the most loyal fans are going to pick this one up.

Virtua Fighter 2 Review

Virtua Fighter 2 was a classic 3D fighting game that really cemented Viruta Fighter as a serious name in fighting games. Arcades, especially in Japan, were packed full of players looking to hone their skills in this highly technical, timing-driven fighter. But you're not getting a faithful version of that arcade classic here on the Wii's Virtual Console series. No, for 800 points ($8) you get the practically unknown version that was released on the Sega Genesis. It squashes all of the arcade version's action into a 2D game but does not contain any of the thrilling gameplay or strategy found in the original game.

However, that's not to say that VF2 for the Genesis is completely without merit. It's actually kind of interesting to see how many moves and combos from the original game made it into this version of the game. The same old punch-punch-punch-kick combo from Sarah is still in there; Jacky can do his double spinning backfist; and so on. The controls are also the same as the arcade version, with guard, punch, and kick buttons. Of course, the timing is completely butchered, so it's not actually entertaining for very long. Still, as a curiosity from days past, the Genesis version of Virtua Fighter 2 is sort of neat. It's just not neat enough to be worth $8, that's all.

The Virtual Console is certainly capable of running such games as Virtua Fighter 2 for the Genesis; the emulation seems accurate enough, right down to the awful animation. But this is one of those situations where you sit back and wonder why, exactly, this game is coming to the Virtual Console at all. Anyone old enough to remember the Genesis game probably knows to stay away, and anyone who only knows of the recent Virtua Fighter installments won?t find anything to like with this ugly chapter in the series? history. Your Wii Virtual Console fighting dollars are better spent on something like Street Fighter II.

Barbarian Review

Barbarian is an attempt at re-creating the manic formula that Capcom used for its Powerstone games, but with a hack-and-slash theme featuring ancient castles, wizards, demons, and more. You'll take on several opponents in a variety of environments, in which you can move around in any direction and even use and interact with certain objects, like rocks, clubs, or even stone pillars. Barbarian executes the most basic elements correctly, but unfortunately it ultimately falls short of its intentions. Uninteresting characters, a poor storyline, and some problems with its gameplay mechanics serve to bring Barbarian down.

There are only three gameplay modes to choose from in Barbarian--practice, quest, and versus. The practice mode teaches you the basics of the game--for example, how to use the magic system and the counter-and-combo system, as well as how to interact with objects in the environment. In practice mode, you're given a computer opponent who essentially stands completely still while you attempt the skill being described. If you successfully complete the skill, the game will kick you back out to the practice menu screen--so if you want to repeatedly practice a specific technique, you need to reenter that particular section and go through it again. The practice mode also offers a full AI opponent in a battle where neither participant loses energy, but as you'll quickly find, almost everything learned in the practice sessions goes flying out the window when fighting a real opponent.

In Barbarian, you can execute several different combinations, depending on the order that you press the weak and heavy strike buttons. Some of these combinations can be used to lift opponents into the air or to stun them. When you've successfully executed a combo, you'll be granted a rune based on the type of combination. So, for example, if you just threw an opponent, you'll be given a throw rune. If you've just executed a basic combination of moves, you'll be given a different rune. Essentially, these runes function as special magic attacks, giving your character the ability to perform techniques that range from damage shields to unblockable strikes. You'll also have access to some basic magic attacks in the form of projectiles, but these can drain your magic power quickly, so you can't just stand at a distance and fire away.

It sounds like a solid gameplay system, but none of it really matters because regardless of how you try to play the game, every fight almost always comes down to just using a specific combination, blocking counterattacks, and then using the same combination again. In Barbarian's quest mode, some of the fights have special conditions in which your character may be poisoned. Or the opponent has the ability to regenerate energy--but even then, you'll fall into the same cycle. Suffice it to say, this makes Barbarian's gameplay pretty tiring, and even if you try to go out of your way to vary your attacks, the enemy AI seems to entice you right back into the routine because of the way your opponent fights.

The aforementioned quest mode has some good points. Each of the 10 characters in the game has a separate storyline that unfolds differently, depending on the fights you select. At the end of each fight, you can also spend some points on a few different character attributes, such as strength and energy. However, the storyline in the quest modes is told through boring, sometimes poorly written dialogue sequences in which a narrator simply reads the text that scrolls up the screen. In addition, the branching storyline aspect isn't handled particularly well because, in some cases, the storyline that you were engaged in beforehand will end abruptly. There's little transition, if any at all. Lastly, the character-building aspect seems largely irrelevant, partly due to problems with the gameplay but also because you simply won't notice any substantial gain in your characters' abilities.

The graphics in Barbarian are surprisingly good. Though the character designs are uninspired--just the usual assortment of barbarians and magic users--all the characters look detailed and animate decently during a fight. Most of the environments in the game are equally appealing. You'll fight in places like the sands of Egypt next to a fallen statue of a pharaoh or in a crumbling castle next to the sea where waves break on the rocks nearby. You'll even fight in the cold north, where a Viking ship is frozen within a massive glacier. The frame rate remains solid on most of the levels, though in some of the levels with large amounts of water, you'll notice some hiccups.

While the basic sound effects in Barbarian are done well, every other aspect of the sound is incredibly subdued. You'll hear grunts from the fighters, as well as the clashing of weapons, but that's about it. The soundtrack seems to serve as ambience rather than to stir you into action.

Overall, there really isn't much to Barbarian. The gameplay mechanics are pretty basic and repetitive, and the storylines are so bland that there's not much value in finishing the game with every character. The versus mode doesn't do much to help matters either, other than to test one of your powered-up characters from the quest mode against a friend's. Even the four-player action is dull. So unless you're desperate for some barbarian action, or unless you wish to increase your chances of getting carpal tunnel syndrome from mashing the same buttons repeatedly, you should probably pass on Barbarian.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Review

Based on a famous manga (Japanese for "comic book"), Jojo's Bizarre Adventure follows the story of Jotaro and his friends as they travel throughout the Far East in search of his mother's captor, Dio. Filling more than 40 volumes, the story of Jotaro Josuke's family (hence the name "Jojo") spans multiple generations and is one of Japan's longest-running series ever. The linchpin of the storyline is the relationship between the main characters and their "stands." Stands are psychic partners that enhance the characters' own physical powers and are something akin to guardian angels.

Fittingly, it was Capcom and its CPS3 technology that came along and made a 2D fighting game that was not only able to capture the detailed artwork and character designs, but was able to handle the extra animation involved with each character's stand. Unlike a game such as Street Fighter III, which used all of the CPS3 board's extra horsepower to render the massive amounts of animation in that game, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure used it to animate four characters onscreen at once (two characters with one stand each). When it was announced that this game would be coming home to the PlayStation, which boasts all of 2 megs of onboard RAM, many were expecting a very poor port, with large sacrifices in character animation and speed. It happened with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and despite the decent port of Street Fighter Alpha 3, things looked grim for the PlayStation version of Jojo.

Amazingly, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure comes home in extremely playable form. Better even than the PlayStation port of SF Alpha 3, Bizarre Adventure retains the arcade version's speed and playability, if not all the animation. Though some frames of animation appear to have been left on the cutting-room floor, if you haven't played the arcade version, you will never notice. Bizarre Adventure plays fast and controls great, even with the PlayStation's controller. One reason for this is the simplified button layout, which maps the weak, medium, and strong attacks to the square, triangle, and circle button, while X activates your stand.Your stand is used to block attacks, offer additional attacks, and absorb damage. However, due to the symbiotic nature of your character and his or her stand, should your stand take damage, you too will share in the punishment. While your stand automatically appears for certain attacks, you can summon it "permanently" by pressing the stand button. If your stand takes damage while exposed, your stand meter drops incrementally and when depleted, you suffer a "stand-break." If the fight ever gets to this point, your character is then stunned and left momentarily vulnerable to attack.

The fighting in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a wild combination of typical Capcom "versus" games, like Marvel vs. Capcom, combined with screen-filling over-the-top super-attacks like those found in Arc System's Guilty Gear. In addition to the normal arcade modes, versus modes, and training modes, there is a story mode that offers various minigames borrowed from the comic book itself. There's a card game that pits you against a character from the book, whose stand smashes its opponents into poker chips. Another game is a side-scrolling shooter that is actually quite difficult and is significantly more than just a simple afterthought. Although most American gamers won't be able to appreciate the subtleties of the storyline as much as their Japanese counterparts might, there is certainly enough dialogue included in the intermittent cutscenes to give you an idea of what's going on. Even if you don't have any knowledge of the original comics, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure still offers a more intriguing back story than the vague Street Fighter plot ever did.

So if you're into your 2D fighters, but have begun to grow tired of the countless Street Fighter spin-offs and bad home conversions, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure offers fine-tuned Capcom quality with a unique storyline and great control. That alone is worth its weight in gold. This one belongs in every fighting-game fan's library.

Street Fighter IV Review

It's obvious that each iteration of the long-running Street Fighter series has been carefully tuned and tweaked to the finest degree, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Street Fighter IV. The lessons learned in the franchise's 20-plus years have been used to prune back the core fighting experience to create something truly special. Street Fighter IV isn't a success simply because it's one of the most technically complex 2D fighters ever made, it's a success because it's also wrapped inside a layer of absolute accessibility. Never has the old "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master" adage been truer than it is here.

The Street Fighter fundamentals have remained consistent over the years; your job is to knock out the other guy or gal. All 12 of the classic world warriors--Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison--are back and playable from the outset, and they're joined by six brand-new and diverse characters. Abel, a mixed martial arts grapple-style character; Crimson Viper a female fighter with sweeping, airborne fire attacks; Rufus, a rotund fighter whose body makes him a bit of a sight gag despite his deceptive speed; and El Fuerte, a pro wrestler whose rushes and air throws make him a slippery foe. Ryu and Ken's sensei, Gouken, also makes his playable-character debut in Street Fighter IV. Naturally, he didn't teach the boys everything he knows, so when they meet again he has a few tricks up his sleeves, including a horizontal and vertical fireball EX move. The game's new end boss, Seth, fills the last spot and joins the list once you've unlocked everyone else. Character balance is absolutely spot-on across the entire roster, and as a result, you should never feel that you can't compete simply because you've chosen one character over another.

You'll need to finish the game multiple times and in special ways to unlock the complete character list. Doing so will make fan favourites Cammy, Sakura, Akuma, Fei Long, Rose, Gen, and Dan playable. Like previous games in the series, Street Fighter IV lets you perform powerful super combos, but it has removed air blocking and parrying completely. Developers Capcom and Dimps have added a completely new gameplay system: focus attacks, a new multipurpose offensive and defensive ability that can be charged to one of three levels by pressing and holding the medium punch and kick buttons simultaneously. There's no onscreen bar to show how charged your attack is, so you'll need to rely on the progressively darkening ink splashes surrounding your character model. Each character features a unique focus animation, so you shouldn't have any trouble working it out after a few rounds with each. Focus attacks make you vulnerable to damage because you need to be standing still to charge them (though you can dash forward or backward to cancel them), but the trade-off is that you'll absorb the first hit without the penalty of an animation reset, allowing for an instant counterattack if you land it. They can also act as armour-breaking moves, shutting down more-powerful attacks. Successfully landing a fully charged focus attack will deal damage and crumple your opponent to the ground, giving you the chance to follow up with an unblockable hit as he or she falls.

The new mechanic also lets you use part of your EX power-meter charge to exit animations early and chain bigger combos together. They take a little getting used to and some serious thumb dexterity, but once they're mastered, you can perform moves such as dragon-punch stalls directly into super moves or use them to juggle players in midair with multiple hits. Your revenge meter builds as you take damage, whereas the EX meter fills as you dish it out. EX power rolls over to the next round, but revenge must be built from scratch each time. This becomes a crucial risk-versus-reward mechanic. Do you take hits to build revenge and power up an ultra attack, or do you deal damage to burn your EX on improved moves, cancels, or save it for a super finisher? The flexibility of this system means that you're free to play according to your strengths and style. But just like reversals, EX power-ups, and ultra combo attacks, focus attacks serve to mix up the experience only for veteran players; such is the game's balance that they have never been required to win a match, and they act more as an additional weapon in the arsenal of a skilled player. They're waiting for you when you want to take a step up and learn how they work, but well-timed basic punches and kicks are just as effective.

The single-player mode is robust and has a lot to offer across several components. Arcade mode pits you against a set number of fights from your unlocked-character roster and culminates in a showdown with Seth. Along the way to your goal, you'll always encounter a rival fight. These are regular fights accompanied by an in-engine exchange with your opponent. They're a welcome mix-up but often add nothing to the character's storyline because some fighters clearly don't even know why they hate one another. Each character's adventure is bookended by an anime-style cinematic movies that explain his or her motivations for attending the tournament. They're quite short and keep story to an absolute minimum, but they get the message across and do a reasonable-enough job of filling in the gaps. Given the amount of additional content shoehorned into this game, we were slightly disappointed to find that no bonus levels have been included, especially since we had high hopes of reliving our car and barrel smashing from Street Fighter II.

Regardless of whether you're down with busting out a tatsumaki senpukyaku at will or think it's some kind of egg-noodle dish, there's a difficulty mode here for you. Eight levels ranging from very easy to hardest are available, so you're sure to find one appropriate for your skill level. That said, even at the gentler difficulties, Street Fighter IV is no cakewalk because your opponents will occasionally mix things up with surprise super and ultra combos. First-timers will have no trouble picking up, playing, and learning as they go. Playing on the medium or above difficulty will also enable score tracking, letting you submit and compare to other players on the game's online leaderboards.

Prior to the 2002 release of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, video games based on the high-octane anime and manga series all had one thing in common: Unless you were a hardcore Dragon Ball Z fan, they were generally quite unbearable. Though the Budokai series has had its ups and downs, all of the Budokai games so far have had a level of polish and accessibility that has merited praise without requiring the "for a Dragon Ball Z game" qualifier. That said, fans looking for a straight follow-up to Budokai 3 will be surprised by what Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi has to offer, and possibly a little disappointed.

Originally released earlier this year in Japan as Dragon Ball Z: Sparking!, Tenkaichi deviates quite significantly from the standardized 3D fighting formula that the core Budokai games have generally adhered to. Developed by Spike, a Japanese studio best known for its somewhat technical wrestling games, Tenkaichi inserts a fairly simple, stripped-down fighting engine into the framework of a free-roaming, third-person action game.

For the majority of the game, you're given a behind-the-back perspective on the action, though the camera will lean a bit to the side when you get up close to your opponent and will cut to an entirely different camera angle for special moves. The main reason behind this rather unorthodox camera angle (unorthodox for a fighter, anyway) is to let you run and fly around the environment as you please. The free-roaming components definitely gives the game a more authentic Dragon Ball Z feel by increasing the overall scope of the fights, though it's stymied somewhat by force fields that limit the size of the levels. It's not unusual to find yourself stuck up against one of these rainbow-colored boundaries, which kind of ruins the whole illusion. Another negative aspect is that there's not much in the way of direct camera control. The problems this creates are twofold. For one, it's not hard to lose track of your opponents, and though you have a radar that can help you pinpoint their location, it's often not quick enough. Secondly, the camera isn't quite flexible enough for the game's fully 3D environment, and you'll regularly find yourself viewing the action from a rather uncomfortable angle.

By using the L1 button to lock onto your opponents, all of your movement instantly becomes relative to their position, allowing you to dash right at them or do a bit of circle-strafing. The lock-on function is a little inconsistent; you can lock on to an opponent from a great distance, though if you choose to move to do a little circle-strafing rather than attack head-on, you'll lose the lock. Hand-to-hand combat is pretty simple, since the square button is the only way to throw a punch. A few consecutive taps will dish out a nice little combo, and you can vary your attacks by holding a direction as you launch your attacks. Additionally, you can create longer combos by throwing in instant teleports and energy attacks. You can launch simple energy (or "ki") attacks with the triangle button, and holding down L2 and triangle will produce a much more substantial blast. You can expect to see your favorite characters trotting out their most well-known moves, as well as power struggles when two characters throw massive energy attacks at you at once.

The simplicity of the combat in Tenkaichi is a bit deceptive, as much of the controls are contextual to your current situation. For example, the circle button by itself serves to block incoming attacks, though if you press to the left or the right just as your opponent is attacking, it instantly teleports you to the side, giving you an opportunity to strike your attacker. On the other hand, the main function of the X button is to let you dash in any direction quickly, though when you use it correctly in the middle of a combo, you can trigger an attack that knocks your opponent across the screen. The combat isn't any deeper or more varied than what's found in the core Budokai games, but it's not as friendly for button-mashing, and the learning curve is much steeper. It's commendable that Spike wanted to try something different here, but the dividends don't quite justify it.

Tenkaichi might have an unorthodox control scheme, but the game mode options are pretty straightforward. The Z Battle Gate operates under the contrivance of restoring Shenron's memories by reenacting classic Dragon Ball moments, though the "classic" status of some of these battles (Krillin vs. Yamcha!) is somewhat suspect. Rather than having you just knock down one opponent after another, the Z Battle Gate regularly gives you conditions to win certain encounters, such as requiring you to use a special finishing move, and you'll also find yourself squaring off with characters in matches that feel more like boss battles than standard fighting-game matches. Z Battle Gate is the first menu option in the game, but the competition is fierce right from the start, and you should probably go through the tutorials and practice modes first to avoid frustration.

You'll earn loads of Z items in the Z Battle Gate, which are special performance-enhancing modules that you can apply to different characters. Each character has a limited number of slots for these enhancements, though certain Z items can be fused to create a single, more-powerful item. It's not entirely unlike the character customization system found in the core Budokai games, and it has an appreciable impact on the capacities of the different characters.

The ultimate battle mode puts a unique spin on the standard tournament and survival modes found in other fighting games. Here you're put at the bottom of a 100-fighter tournament, with the goal of working your way up to number one. Winning matches will bring you up a rank and can also earn you points. Rather than knocking you down a rank, losing a match will deduct from points you've accrued. It's a nice buffer against losses, though the consequences for running out of points altogether are severe, requiring you to start the mode all over again. It's just too harsh, and it makes for more moments of frustration than are necessary.

The other two modes found in Tenkaichi are the world tournament mode, which gives you several tiered tournaments to fight in, and the dueling mode, which lets you go one-on-one against either the computer or another player. The multiplayer game isn't as compelling in Tenkaichi as that found in the core Budokai games, largely because the behind-the-back perspectives require the use of split-screen for two players. With the expansive nature of the levels and the outstanding camera issues, these things create more technical hurdles than players ought to be expected to wade through.

Some clumsy camera work aside, Tenkaichi looks pretty good. Though some of the fighters' finer details appear a little blocky up close, they're all fine 3D renderings of their 2D counterparts. When powered up, characters crackle with energy, and well-timed use of slow motion gives many of the attacks some extra punch. Some of the between-fight animations can look a little mechanical, but in action everything feels smooth and exaggerated in an appropriately DBZ manner. Though the power struggles have an appropriately over-the-top feel to them, regular energy attacks don't always carry the grandeur they ought to and are further diminished by canned attack routines that always play out the same way.

The Dragon Ball Z name carries with it several decades of signature sound effects, musical themes, and character voices, which Tenkaichi basks in. All of the sound effects for punches, powering up, instant transmissions, ki blasts, and the rest of the Dragon Ball Z trademarks come through crisp and clear. As has become expected, the American voice cast provides character vocals, though you might get the impression that some of these actors are growing weary of the characters. If you've been exposed to the US version of Dragon Ball Z exclusively, you can have your mind completely blown by switching the voices to use the original Japanese voice cast instead. Rounding out the sound effects is a soundtrack that balances the funk of the original Japanese DBZ soundtrack and the more rocking American version. It can create some inconsistency, and there are a few occasions when sound fidelity is questionable, but the payoff is quite worth it.

Despite the fact that Tenkaichi doesn't quite live up to the higher standards set by Budokai 3, the execution is still good enough, and the game makes the kind of thorough use of the license that will keep the DBZ devout happy. Make no mistake, though--the gameplay is different enough that Tenkaichi should be considered a spin-off more than a sequel, and Budokai fans should approach it with a bit of caution.