Naruto Uzumaki is a colorful ninja who excels in combat but can be kind of annoying. It's therefore fitting (if unfortunate) that while Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm is a great fighting game, it's also one in which you have to endure a lengthy, story-driven Ultimate Mission mode in order to unlock most of the playable combatants. Ultimate Ninja Storm does a lot of things very well, but exploration, item collection, and storytelling are not among them.

The first thing you'll want to do in Ultimate Ninja Storm is pick a favorite character and dive right into combat. You can't play the game before its mandatory installation is finished, though, and because there's almost 4GB of information that needs to copy to your hard drive, you'll wait at least 10 minutes. Once that's out of the way, the Free Battle mode lets you choose who you want to fight as and against and where you want the fight to take place, and it gets the action under way with a minimum of fuss.

Although there's no tutorial option in Ultimate Ninja Storm, the controls are simple enough that they don't take long to figure out. The face buttons are used for jumps, projectiles, melee attacks, and chakra charging. The shoulder buttons are used to block and call in support characters. The D pad has four different items mapped to it, and the left analog stick is used for movement. You're free to run anywhere you like in the large arenas, and even when combatants are far apart the camera does a superb job of framing the action. Occasionally you might end up viewing the battle from a camera that's more or less looking over the shoulder of your opponent, but the shifts in perspective are so smooth and so intelligent that the action very rarely gets confusing. It's a testament to how great the camera is and how accessible the controls are that this holds true even when you end up defying gravity in fights that move from the ground to the vertical surfaces of walls in some arenas.

Since there's only one button used for melee attacks, that's your go-to anytime you're close enough to an opponent to land a punch. There are plenty of lengthy and satisfying combos that can be performed using very little else, but getting a combo started doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get to finish it. That's because blocking is relatively easy--though not to the point that you can simply hold down a shoulder button and never worry about getting hit. Once your guard is up you can hold it in place for a good amount of time, but this doesn't do you a lot of good. Your opponent will be charging up his storm gauge and become more powerful every time a blow lands, and ultimately your guard will fail and, because you were hiding behind it for so long, you'll be dazed for a few seconds when it breaks. There's an excellent risk-versus-reward mechanic that comes into play when you're having to play defensively; rather than keeping your guard up, you have the option to tap the block button repeatedly in an attempt to parry an attack the instant before it lands. If you succeed, you'll perform a substitution jutsu, evading the attack completely and appearing directly behind your opponent, ready to launch into a combo of your own.

One of Ultimate Ninja Storm's most interesting features is the use of chakra. You have a finite amount of this energy that can be used any time to make your existing moves more powerful, and the longer you charge up the chakra, the greater its effect is. You can dash across the screen in an instant by using it in conjunction with the jump button, for example, or turn three projectiles into 30 with a ranged attack. Using chakra with your melee attack will perform a character-specific jutsu attack, some of which look impressively like anime scenes as they play out. Managing your chakra can be every bit as important as guarding against an opponent's attacks--you can restore chakra at any time by standing still and holding down the chakra button, but doing so leaves you completely vulnerable.

Using your character's items well can also turn the tide of a battle on occasion, though it's unfortunate that reaching the D pad they're mapped to is almost impossible without briefly giving up either the left analog stick or the face buttons. Items that you can use at any time during a fight include consumables that boost stats and various thrown weapons that either lower the stats of enemies or simply do damage on impact. There's a lot of variety, and because some of the items are exclusive to certain characters, they're worth considering when it comes to choosing who to fight as. The basic controls might be the same for everyone, but the different fighting styles and battle items ensure that no two characters feel the same.

The problem is that only 12 of the 25 characters on the roster are available from the outset, and the only way to unlock the rest of them--along with extra moves, support characters, outfits, and awakening modes--is to play through the Ultimate Mission mode. Many of the missions you undertake are battles that you have to win while meeting certain conditions, and they make for some interesting challenges. Other missions, though, involve minigames that aren't nearly as much fun: You'll play hide-and-seek with the children of Hidden Leaf Village, you'll race through forests and vertically up the trunks of huge trees, and you'll wonder why you can't unlock the rest of the roster any other way. Worse still, wandering around Hidden Leaf Village between missions to find new missions and to collect the items and currency necessary to unlock new battle features stops being fun after 30 minutes, once you've seen everything.

Hidden Leaf Village looks great, but nothing interesting ever happens there. There are shops to visit, and there are characters with one or two lines of dialogue each to interact with; but until you near the end of the story missions (each is a flashback to a key event from one of the first 100-plus episodes of the anime), there's very little to test your skills there. Even the secret scrolls that you collect and subsequently spend on unlocking support characters are clearly marked on the map and impossible to miss, so picking them up feels more like a chore than a challenge. The controls you use while in Hidden Leaf are similar to those in combat, but here you use them in much more mundane ways. The only time you'll need to use your chakra, for example, is to open locked doors, and the only targets you'll be punching or throwing shuriken at are inanimate objects that all contain money or scrolls.

Regardless of the fact that Hidden Leaf is so beautifully realized in Ultimate Ninja Storm, and despite villagers' attempts to tell you that there are "a lot of people in it," the place feels deserted. More recognizable characters and generic villagers show up as you progress through the missions, but the village never really feels alive, and it would still feel quiet even if you multiplied the apparent population by 10. It's laughable, then, when one of your missions is to break up a fight between the characters Shino and Kiba, who, in an empty space that could comfortably accommodate a few hundred people, are arguing about getting in each other's way. More laughable still is the notion that their fight (read: quiet disagreement) is supposedly bothering people. Still, when other missions on offer include challenges like "play for 20 hours" and "walk 20,000 paces," that one almost qualifies as a highlight.

The real high points of the Ultimate Mission Mode--and, sadly, there are very few of them--are the boss battles that pit you against "giant" characters like Gamabunta and Gaara. Beating these missions requires a combination of the skills you've learned in regular combat and some rapid button-pressing reflexes for cinematic events during which command prompts appear onscreen. These encounters are not only the most spectacular-looking features of the game, but they're also a lot of fun and, since they're generally bookended by cutscenes, are some of the only times that the story is delivered via something other than a scroll of text.

Ultimate Ninja Storm does a great job of looking, sounding, and feeling like its source material. The combat is a lot of fun with a friend or against any of the AI's four difficulty settings. Unfortunately, though, to get the most from it you have to spend a minimum of 10 to 15 hours playing and replaying missions in a mode that's artificially long. The lack of online play is also disappointing given that it's practically a requisite for the genre at this point. Ultimate Ninja Storm's biggest problem as a fighting game is simply that it isn't just a fighting game.

Guilty Gear follows in the footsteps of Darkstalkers, Street Fighter Alpha, and Tekken as the latest fighting game series to successfully touch down on the PSP, in spite of the system's portable form factor. Confusingly, this package includes two different games, but shares its name with one of them in particular. The game titled Guilty Gear Judgment is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up inspired by classics like Final Fight and Golden Axe, and while it's repetitive and mostly mindless, it's pretty fun. But you also get Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, a pure one-on-one 2D fighting game. The latter is the more complex, more interesting game, but it's also missing some key features found in previous versions and is harder to play using the PSP's somewhat imprecise controls. Other than that, both games share the sharply drawn 2D artwork, rocking guitar riffs, and wild character designs that the Guilty Gear series is known for, and both support local two-player action over a Wi-Fi connection. It's a solid package for fans of the series or of fighting games in general.

The beat-'em-up is a never-before-released game, but the fighting game is based on a version of the Guilty Gear series from a few years ago. Unfortunately, it's missing some of the best single-player modes found in previous versions of that game. Specifically, the story mode and mission mode aren't in here, so you'll have to settle for a conventional arcade mode and survival mode (plus the weird "master of medals" mode, which isn't much different from survival mode). The underlying gameplay itself is still good, but difficult to control with finesse using the PSP's D pad and buttons. Many of the more sophisticated techniques and combos require you to press multiple buttons simultaneously while quickly entering in fairly complex commands on the D pad, and it's very difficult to pull off this type of stuff on the PSP, more so than usual. The graphics also appear to be scaled down somewhat, so while they're as colorful as ever, they look blockier than you may remember. There's still a lot of depth to explore, and the action is fast and intense; but given that this game really isn't a great fit for the PSP's limitations, it's little wonder why the other game in the package is given emphasis.

Guilty Gear Judgment, the side-scroller, builds off of the "boost mode" first seen in the unsuccessful experiment that was Guilty Gear Isuka. That game threw together a basic Final Fight clone that allowed the Guilty Gear cast to run toward the right while beating up tons of generic thugs. Guilty Gear Judgment builds on this by offering up a customized, simplified control scheme that fits with the formula, a good amount of original content including several impressive new boss opponents, and a structure that encourages you to play through using different characters. At the core, though, this is still a simple beat-'em-up in which you'll spend most of your time pounding groups of monsters into submission using a handful of moves. It's a straightforward but fairly satisfying format that once was extremely popular in video arcades, but naturally died out as more complex, more interesting games emerged. So Guilty Gear Judgment pretty much requires you to have some of those classic beat-'em-ups as a frame of reference if you're going to fully appreciate it.

Initially there are only a handful of characters available, but each one runs into some of the other members of the Guilty Gear cast during the course of the game, who then become unlocked. Characters can use a variety of normal and special moves to deal damage to all kinds of weird monsters, mannequins, and other threats, and the game is divided into a bunch of relatively brief stages that are all at least slightly different. The action starts off very easy, but Guilty Gear Judgment is fairly long for a beat-'em-up, so you're going to run out of health and lives after some number of stages. You can then restart on the last stage you visited, and it'll only be a matter of time before you reach the final boss--which, predictably, is by far the toughest fight in the game. It takes a good several hours to finish the game for the first time, and it's worth replaying as different characters or with a friend in the co-op mode. The full character roster is automatically available when playing in co-op, and the brief story sequences get stripped away in favor of completely nonstop brawling. Interestingly, both players aren't limited to having to fight on the same screen, but other than that, the co-op mode is what you'd expect. You can't hurt your companion, so you gain the advantages of double the firepower at the expense of having to share the number of remaining lives.

Guilty Gear's slick, well-animated 2D graphics and head-banging guitar rock soundtrack translate well to the PSP, and even though Guilty Gear Judgment recycles all the main character graphics from its fighting game counterparts, the enemies and background stages are all new. Also, support for wireless two-player co-op in Judgment and head-to-head fighting in #Reload can sweeten the deal substantially if you've got a friend nearby with similar taste for this sort of thing. Ultimately, this package is fairly well suited to the PSP, as the beat-'em-up game is ideal for quick sessions of straight mayhem, while the fighting game--while tougher to control--can keep you busy trying to master a variety of tough combos. Chances are you're already a fan of the Guilty Gear series if you're interested in this game, and if that's the case, you'll probably like this latest installment too.

Godzilla: Save the Earth Review

The world's greatest movie monster and his numerous, gigantic enemies are back in Godzilla: Save the Earth, sort of a sequel to 2002's Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee for the GameCube. The new game, available only for the PS2 and Xbox, features nearly 20 different, recognizable monsters, as well as what seems like a wide variety of modes of play, including an online one. However, at its core, Godzilla: Save the Earth is still a rather clunky, unfulfilling fighting game whose cast of characters is by far the best thing it has going for it. Hardcore Godzilla fans will appreciate seeing the decent renderings of some of their favorite monsters here, but they're unlikely to be terribly impressed by the action itself.

The main menu of Godzilla: Save the Earth is littered with options. You'll find action mode, versus mode, melee mode, survival mode, challenges, multiplayer, two different galleries (one exclusively for the latest movie, Godzilla: Final Wars), and a purchase mode in which you can spend points earned while playing to unlock additional monsters, cities, gallery art, and more. This seems like more variety than it really is, because, for the most part, the gameplay itself is pretty similar in all these modes. There are just some slight changes to the rules, such as how versus mode is a one-on-one affair where the last monster standing wins, while melee mode supports up to four players in a chaotic free-for-all scoring contest. Those who played Destroy All Monsters Melee will immediately recognize that game's stuttering, choppy, rather sluggish feel in this game's action. Destroy All Monsters wasn't great back in 2002, and its basic gameplay hasn't aged or carried over well here.

Even so, Godzilla: Save the Earth can be fun for a while. Each of the game's monsters has a fairly small selection of moves, including various punches, kicks, and other attacks involving tails, horns, beams, spikes, and other weapons. By and large, the characters play quite similarly, as almost each one will rely on its basic moves, beam attacks, and throws to inflict damage on others. However, each monster does have certain unique traits, which include resistances and vulnerabilities to certain types of attacks. This presumably gives the game some depth, but since the resistances and vulnerabilities are so specific (there are something like 10 different damage types in the game), in practice, the whole system is easily forgotten and ignored. Instead, you'll be focused on waling on your opponent (or opponents) while also steering clear of any pests in the vicinity, such as human military forces and their pathetic tanks and things.

As in Destroy All Monsters Melee, you'll also want to keep an eye out for certain power-ups in each battlefield that can either restore your health or energy or put you into "rage mode," making you stronger and capable of unleashing your strongest attack. Also like in the previous game, your computer-controlled opponents (at the medium or hard difficulty settings) have an uncanny knack for making a beeline toward offscreen power-ups, as if the life of a giant monster weren't hard enough as it is.

One other power-up causes Battra to appear and begin bombarding the enemy from the skies, which effectively replaces the Mothra air strike from the last game. This is fine, however, because Mothra is now a playable character. He's a relatively interesting one, since he starts off in his larval form but can metamorphose into his moth form during battle. The other highlight of the new additions to the character roster is Jet Jaguar, a humanoid robot who resembles the better-known Ultraman. His main special ability lets him become gigantic or tiny in a split second. The other pretty impressive cast members include two versions of Godzilla, the telekinetically gifted SpaceGodzilla (according to the manual, "SpaceGodzilla grabs buildings and opponents with his mind, rather than his arms"), the cool-looking Destroyah, the beetlelike Megalon, three-headed Ghidora and the souped-up Mecha-King Ghidoran, the fast-flying Rodan, and a couple of different missile-spewing Mecha-Godzilla versions.

Again, though, it's unfortunate that the members of this illustrious lineup don't get to duke it out in the context of a faster-paced, harder-hitting game. They can all pick up small buildings, boats, airplanes, and other things to use as projectiles, and they can all smash buildings and cause other types of collateral damage with their various attacks. However, this often doesn't look particularly convincing or on the monster-sized scale that you'd probably hope for. Granted, Godzilla's movies aren't all state-of-the-art in terms of their special effects...at least certainly not by today's standards. Even so, a video game like this is the perfect place for Godzilla to strut his stuff, but he and his foes don't come across seeming particularly powerful here. Sure, they'll knock one another high into the air, and they'll send one another sprawling to the turf, but most of the different moves in this game just don't feel like they pack much of a wallop. The exceptions are the various monsters' beam attacks, which do look pretty damaging. It's also possible for two monsters to lock beams together in sort of a nuclear-powered tug-of-war that makes for some of the game's sporadically exciting moments.

As mentioned, Godzilla: Save the Earth allows you to take your business online for a few basic modes of play for up to four players, and you can throw in computer opponents to fill out the match. If you can connect, that is. With the PS2 version, we found barely anyone playing online several days after the game's release, and couldn't actually get into an online match even when we did find an opponent--we experienced this both from an office T1 line as well as a home DSL connection. We successfully got into some sessions on the Xbox, but the results were predictably mixed. Since the fundamentals of combat aren't all that much fun, the appeal of playing this game online is rather limited. You're much more likely to be entertained by playing against your other Godzilla-loving friends in the same room.

In addition to online play, Godzilla: Save the Earth introduces a smattering of "challenges," which are little single-player minigames that, for the most part, are much more irritating than the basic action. Most of them are timed challenges requiring you to do such things as sink battleships by throwing stuff at them, shoot hoops in a makeshift basketball game, prevent the destruction of a spitting image of San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid by destroying UFOs that are zapping it, and more. There's nothing wrong with throwing in a little variety, but the first-person shooter-style control scheme used for most of the challenges is awkward, so the time spent making these challenges might have been better applied toward tightening up the game's underlying combat system. Some of these might have been more enjoyable when played with human opponents, but probably not by much.

Godzilla: Save the Earth's lackluster presentation doesn't help its case. The graphics border on mediocrity and are OK at best, thanks to the faithfully rendered monsters. However, the game's frame rate chugs along inconsistently, the various attack animations are unconvincing, and damage to the game's environments doesn't look great, either. The game does have its moments when everything looks just about right, but these moments aren't frequent. As expected, the Xbox version looks sharper and cleaner than the PS2 version, but this partly just brings out some of the other inadequacies in the graphical presentation. As for the audio, it at least includes the signature roars of each of the monsters, but the rest of it is pretty bland. Furthermore, the game's music is barely audible.

The nuclear-powered lizard's had it pretty tough in the world of video games. Godzilla celebrates his 50th anniversary this year, and games based on his city-stomping, monster-crunching exploits have been around for the last couple of decades of that time. This particular game at least features a large, diverse cast of playable monsters (though most of them are initially locked away). However, it lacks the dramatic look and full-scale action that's made its namesake a cinematic icon. Godzilla's most ardent fans will be able to forgive some of this game's faults, but anyone else might as well give it a pass.

Bloody Roar Extreme Review

As if the idea of beating people up using exaggerated martial-arts combos weren't enough of a draw, the Bloody Roar games also let you transform into anthropomorphic animals that, according to the games' fiction, are even better than humans at beating people up using exaggerated martial-arts combos. The fifth game in the series, Bloody Roar Extreme, is mostly a straight port of Bloody Roar: Primal Fury for the GameCube, a game that's over a year old and is itself based on 2001's Bloody Roar 3 for the PlayStation 2. So Bloody Roar Extreme isn't exactly a fresh take on fighting games, though it looks good and controls well enough. It also inherits its predecessors' rather simplistic fighting system, though this first Bloody Roar game for the Xbox can nonetheless provide some fast-paced button-mashing fun for a while.

Bloody Roar Extreme is best suited to those who aren't too serious about the fighting genre, though there's at least some level of depth. The controls are simplistic--there's a punch button, a kick button, and a button that makes you instantly change into your character's beast form, if you can do so at the time. Alternately, when your beast change meter is full, you can hyper-transform, which puts you in a powered-up beast form for a little while. You can also use the shoulder buttons to sidestep left or right, though such tactics are usually unnecessary. You'd do just as well to jam on the punch or kick buttons rapidly in order to produce long strings of dazzling attacks.

You might think that varying up your punches and kicks, or using throws or counters, would be a good idea. In practice, though, you don't really have to. Not against the computer, anyway. The computer can be easily beaten by using the same moves over and over. At higher difficulties, and especially toward the end of the arcade mode, the computer starts fighting cheap. You probably won't mistake this for a challenge, though. At any rate, if you've ever wondered what the pejorative expression "button masher" really refers to, you'll find out when you play Bloody Roar Extreme. It's unfair to say the game's fighting system is totally superficial, since there are a few complex tricks that can be learned. However, you could get by more easily without bothering. The difference between an excellent fighting game and a game like Bloody Roar Extreme is that Bloody Roar offers little reward or advantage to players who bother to learn all the moves. As if to discourage you from even trying, there's no in-game move list for the fighters.

The combat is very dynamic, at least. Many attacks send the opponent on the receiving end flying backward, fast and hard, sometimes into walls, and sometimes straight through them. Other attacks send opponents skyward, letting you follow up with juggle combos. Every character has a couple of devastating supermoves that turn the screen into a porridge of hit sparks as a gratuitous combo meter racks up dozens of effortless hits. These supermoves, though toned down somewhat from Bloody Roar 3, are still really powerful, letting you easily shave off about a third of your opponent's health. Meanwhile, transforming into beast form, as in previous Bloody Roar games, is just as much a gimmick as a gameplay element. Actually, if you've played previous Bloody Roar games, it's far less of a gimmick by now. At any rate, characters in beast form gain a few new moves and abilities and regenerate some of their lost health, but they otherwise aren't too different from their standard forms. The characters aren't too different from one another either, once you get past their looks.

Bloody Roar Extreme has some secrets that can be unlocked, including a hidden fighter who wasn't in Primal Fury for the GameCube. Since it won't require much effort for you to beat the game with any of the characters, it's nice that the game at least throws in some bonus stuff for variety's sake. Even so, since the computer won't pose much of a long-term challenge, you probably won't get much value out of Bloody Roar Extreme as a single-player game. There are more than a dozen characters, but you could finish the game with all of them in a sitting or two. As a two-player game--and fighting games are always better when you play them against a willing human opponent--Bloody Roar Extreme can be fun, though it can also be frustrating because of the punishing supermoves and easily performed chain combos. Still, if you don't take your fighting games too seriously, you'll probably enjoy playing the game against a friend for a while.

For some reason, Bloody Roar Extreme replaces Primal Fury's anime intro and ending sequences with prerendered CG cutscenes that look OK at best. Bloody Roar's in-game graphics are actually better--the character models look good and animate smoothly. You'll notice the fighters' facial expressions changing and nice little details in their clothing, plus the whole game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The background scenery isn't quite as well done as the characters, though it still provides plenty to gawk at. The graphics of Bloody Roar Extreme hold up surprisingly well, and for better or worse make this as good looking as any other fighting game on the Xbox.

The audio hasn't stood the test of time quite as well. The characters' voices fit them well enough, though they repeat the same sound bites over and over, and when they shape-change to animal form, they sound pretty generic. The game's upbeat soundtrack, which consists of completely uncool guitar riffs, is perhaps a suitable match for its anime-influenced character designs, though it can also get rather irritating.

Overall, Bloody Roar Extreme isn't as good as any of the latest installments in the major 3D fighting game series out there, though it's certainly competent and appealing in some ways. It'd make a decent rental and a fine way to kill some time, especially if you have some friends who'd be willing to try it. Even if they're not into fighting games, you wouldn't be lying if you told them it's easy to get into and get good at Bloody Roar Extreme.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 Review

Though Atari seemed to have established a pretty comfortable rhythm with the first three Dragon Ball Z: Budokai fighting games, it chose to shake things up with last year's spin-off, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi. It strayed from the conventional fighting game format in favor of a third-person perspective and more-free-roaming action, and the fighting felt a bit more technical, though not necessarily any deeper. Its newly released sequel does little to address the clunky, somewhat limited combat of the original, though a wealth of playable characters all but ensures that this game will get its hooks into fans eager to fight as their favorite Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT characters.

Like its predecessor, Tenkaichi 2 is a fighter that's played from a behind-the-back perspective. You're given the illusion of an open world, and most of the environments make good use of the 3D space with plenty of hills, valleys, bodies of water, and destructible environmental items, such as buildings and massive rock formations, to knock your opponent around. Attempts at exploration, though, are stopped short by massive webbed force fields that surround the battleground, making it apparent just how confined the environment really is. It can take a while for first-timers to adjust to the somewhat unconventional control scheme, but the action is pretty simple. You're given a button for up-close melee attacks, a button for ranged "ki" energy attacks, a charge button for restoring the energy needed for ki attacks, two dash moves for either closing or widening the distance between you and your opponent, and a block button, which, when used in the right context, can also instantly teleport you a small distance. Fighters will regularly get knocked high into the air during combat, and you can move up and down through the air with the press of a button.

To engage your opponents, you'll need to lock onto them, which is either done by a press of a button when they are within sight or will happen automatically when you're close enough. The whole lock-on system is still a source of frustration, since your camera and control perspectives are relative to your enemy's position, which can make for some unintuitive directional controls. Also, the camera still has problems dealing with the full 3D space, and if characters are right below or above you, it's impossible to see them. Fans will recognize some of the signatures of Dragon Ball Z combat in Tenkaichi 2, including quick fits of up-close melee attacks, massive energy wave attacks, and fighters being knocked great distances and through buildings and mountains. There are also plenty of character transformations and tag team battles, but needlessly convoluted controls hinder their usefulness. Though the number of unique special attacks for each character is limited, they're usually the ones you'd want to see. The problem is that you have access to many characters' most powerful abilities right out of the gate, and they're generally not that hard to pull off. Additionally, the controls to pull off these often-protracted, screen-filling assaults are basically the same for every character, and the combined result is some seriously repetitive gameplay.

Since the behind-the-back perspective means multiplayer has to be done via a less-than-ideal split-screen mode, you'll probably spend most of your time in Tenkaichi 2 playing against the computer, which is predictable and has a weakness to midranged combat. It doesn't take long to realize that all you need to do is knock your opponent a short distance, launch an energy attack, recharge while your opponent is immobile, and repeat. It's monotonous, especially since you end up watching the same canned special attack sequences several times over the course of a single fight. One thing that Tenkaichi 2 does address is the stifling difficulty of the original, though the challenge from fight to fight within each difficulty level can be wildly inconsistent. Though the action moves quickly, the controls can feel unwieldy on the PlayStation 2, something that's even more pronounced when the Wii's motion controls add a layer of abstraction. Rather than simply pressing buttons, you'll be shaking the Nunchuk and waving the Wii Remote around to pull off moves. It's not intuitive, and a lot of the controls are context sensitive not only to your opponent's position, but to where you have the Wii Remote pointed. The Wii version handles much more easily with the Classic Controller or with a standard GameCube controller, though the Dual Shock 2 still proves to be the best-suited controller for the action.

Ungainly gameplay will keep Tenkaichi 2 from appealing to those just looking for a good fight, but the sheer volume of fighters and content will likely satiate DBZ fans. There are dozens of playable characters from throughout the run of both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, including Goku look-alikes Bardock and Turles, minor DBZ players like Yajirobe, and powerful DBGT villains like Bebi Vegita, Broly, and Android #13. Most of these fighters must be unlocked in the game's adventure mode before they can be used in the separate tournament and duel modes. The adventure mode is long and chronicles basically the entire run of DBZ and DBGT. It's a surprisingly long-lasting mode, especially for a fighting game, but you have to slog through a lot of stuff that has already been covered in numerous other DBZ fighters before you get to see anything new. Though it's cool to see more obscure content like the stories from The Tree of Might and Lord Slug alongside the more predictable Saiyan, Freeza, Cell, and Buu sagas, the game does a poor job of telling the stories. While the actual fights move fast enough and are brimming with enough crazy energy attacks and hard-hitting melee action to make them fun to watch, little effort was put into the cutscenes used to drive the story. You'll notice a blockiness to the characters that's not apparent during a fight, especially around their hands. Though occasional efforts are made to re-create specific scenes from the anime, the cutscenes usually try to get by with the in-game animations, which look awkward in a dramatic context.

You'll often need to beat an opponent to advance the story, only to see that in the next story sequence, your characters have been thoroughly thrashed, a contradiction that creates a real disconnect between the action and the story. Worst of all, the game will often sum up story arcs with a little bit of text that describes the most exciting parts, rather than showing them. So, instead of getting to see Goku summon an incredible spirit bomb from the Tree of Might to destroy Turles, you get to read about it. The pacing of the story mode is further stifled by nearly constant load times. You'll wait 15 seconds to watch two characters exchange a line of dialogue, then wait another five seconds to load a character select screen, and then another 20 seconds before you get to fight. It could take you a good 20 hours to get through the whole adventure mode in Tenkaichi 2, but you'll likely grow bored with it before then. The voice actors in the game, who are mostly the same actors who voice the Funimation-dubbed US version of the anime, also seem pretty bored at this point, though it's tough to blame them after having to energetically spout lines like "This is the end for you, Freeza!" over and over again for the past 10 years. There's some catchy music thrown in there, but you end up hearing the same two or three upbeat tunes over and over again.

Save for the different control schemes and some marginally improved graphics on the Wii, there's not much difference between the two versions of Tenkaichi 2, and neither is easy to recommend. Those who were able to wade through the problems of the original will find a lot of content to play around with here, but this is a game that is simply not suitable for anyone else.

Originally released in Japan a few months ago as the tongue-twistingly titled Eretzvaju, Titus has picked up the projectile-based fighter and released it in the States as the hilariously named Evil Zone. An amalgamation of Psychic Force and Destrega, Evil Zone is a projectile-based 3D fighter that adds a dynamic element lacking from most of today's fighting games. Developed by Yuke's, the team behind the successful (in Japan at least) Toukon Retsuden series, and the not so successful Soukaigi (Square's recent action RPG), Evil Zone is a refreshing surprise from a development team not known for fighting games.

The premise in Evil Zone centers around the main character, Danvaizer, a superhero in the mold of classic Japanese afternoon TV shows (a la Power Rangers, Kamen Rider, etc.). While the storyline is truly superfluous, it nevertheless suffices as reason enough to gather Danvaizer and nine other combatants together to do battle in a distinctly different manner than most other fighting games.

Like Psychic Force, the majority of the action takes place via long-range attacks. Streamlining things considerably is the fact that there are only two action buttons at work: attack and block. While this may seem unfeasibly simple, the control scheme fits the game just fine. The attack button, when pressed once, twice, or three times, at a distance, will fire a basic projectile attack. When pressed within striking distance, your character will automatically use his close-quarters attack. The subtleties of the battle engine only reveal themselves at a distance, however, as the best and most powerful attacks are almost all long-range. By pressing the attack button in conjunction with the D-pad (up, down, left, or right), each character will perform different moves. Depending on how long you hold the attack button down, this will also affect the nature of the attack. For example, by pressing up and attack at the same time, one character might unleash an energy discuss. If you press up and the attack button rapidly two or three times, that same attack would now come out in two or three smaller, faster bursts. Also, each character has a stun attack (either forward and attack, or backwards and attack) that you can dizzy your opponent with, setting him up for a smash attack (forward, forward, attack), a projectile attack, or, better yet, a captured attack (down and attack). Captured attacks are particularly cool because each character has at least three different moves, depending on his proximity to the enemy (midrange, long distance, or behind). Should you snare your opponent with a captured attack, you'll be treated to some of the most visually spectacular moves yet seen in a fighting game. Take Danvaizer, for instance. One of his captured attacks holds his quarry suspended in midair as he summons the help of an orbiting satellite. The satellite then receives its digital commands and sends down a beam of light, through the clouds, like something out of Final Fantasy VII. The beam then strikes the hapless recipient in a screen-clearing explosion that does considerable damage. On top of the supercharged melee is the presence of the crystal attack. By holding down the attack button you'll fill up your life bar with a yellow streak. When your bar fills up you'll receive a crystal above your meter. You can store up to three crystals, which, when activated by your character's particular crystal attack, will essentially launch a supercapture move that involves highly damaging, highly humiliating attacks, that also differ depending on proximity. Above all, Evil Zone features some of the most innovative moves you've seen in a fighter.

Balancing the all-out offensive blitz is the block button. The block button will essentially neutralize almost any attack and must be used prominently, or else you'll find yourself facing the dirt in no time. Certain attacks, depending on their power, will chip away at your life bar like any decent attack would. In fact, the block button comes in especially handy when someone launches an up-close-and-personal crystal attack. The camera will switch to a dynamic close-up view of you swatting away your opponent's ferocious attack with blinding ease. It's awesome to watch this game in action. The other thing that aids you in attack avoidance is the ability to side step. By pressing up or down, you'll walk into or out of the foreground. Jump attacks only occur when the D-pad is used in conjunction with the attack button, so the 3D movement may take some adjusting to. In any case, it works very well and is actually useful for avoiding unwanted damage.

Feature-wise, Evil Zone is your typical game with typical features (training mode, survival, versus, story, options). The most interesting mode would have to be the story mode. In story mode, each character has his own between-game attract screens that give the game a lot more personality than your usual "now loading" screen. After you've met certain requirements, additional bonuses unlock, such as an illustration gallery, music player, narrator selects, and an encyclopedia. Each character's own particular tale is told through still shots, engine-based cutscenes, and some uniformly hilarious voice acting. Instead of using subtitles with the original Japanese language, Titus opted to go all out and re-record everyone's dialogue. Too bad the dubbing is about as good as those old kung-fu movies of the '70s and '80s. Mouths continue to move after the character is done talking and the actors sound like rejects from a high school play. Interestingly enough, the instruction booklet is also victim to an incredibly poor translation.

Graphically, the game is a mixed bag that leans in favor of its pros as opposed to its cons. The characters themselves look great, with sumptuous light sourcing lathered over each unique fighter. The characters are also nicely detailed and look great even up close. Each of the fighter's special attacks is unique to the user; they look great and are amazingly inventive. Whenever you pull off a special attack, particularly a capture attack, the camera switches to multiple dynamic angles that give you a truly cinematic view - simply the best seat in the house at all times, and you never see the same attack from the same angle. Should you use only one supermove throughout the whole game, the autocamera will find a new way for you to view it each time. The downside is when you look at the backgrounds, which offer nothing in the way of geographical variances (like Destrega and its multitiered arenas). Instead, the settings are completely flat, with simple 2D bitmaps as backgrounds. Also, the backgrounds have a tendency to warp and look pretty weak as a result. Nevertheless, you'll soon forget about it once the fireworks start zipping around.

The soundtrack is nicely done, with each character having his own personal score, giving everyone a distinct feel. Sound effects are also well done and suit every effect in the game so you get a good sense of the action. Like Psychic Force, the introduction is hand-animated and is a nice touch to this extremely fun game. While the endings are really short and based around one generic theme, the game offers a lot of replay value, especially if you have a friend to play against.

While this game could have been an all-out offensive smorgasbord like the first Bloody Roar, it manages to balance itself well, despite only having two buttons to work with. That simple scheme works out well here. Despite the odd exclusion of now-common features like analog support and Dual Shock vibration, the control is top-notch with response times being right on the money. The characters look cool, if a touch derivative, but once you see the flowing hair and awesome special attacks, critics will soon find themselves at a loss for words. While it's not the greatest game of all time, Evil Zone is extremely fun and it shows that Yuke's has learned something from its past experiences. Although it's hard to make an impression in the fighting genre nowadays, Evil Zone (despite the horrible name and iffy voice acting) is a game that's definitely worth picking up.

One would think a game bearing the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons license would at least be mildly entertaining. Instead, gamers get just a fighting game - and a bad one at that. If one word had to be used to sum up Iron and Blood, "laughable" would fit just fine.

Playing Iron and Blood is as painful as being hit over the head repeatedly with a blunt object. Character control is slow and unresponsive: Think of the type of game where it's hard to tell if the move you made was a special move or not (occasionally the announcer shouts "Combination!" to let you know you probably did something right). Campaign mode adds a team aspect, where you pick a series of characters and do battle with opposing forces. This is where artifacts come into play, which can enhance a character by making him stronger or faster, or bringing fallen compatriots back to life.

Onscreen, Iron and Blood looks like a real clunker. While still photos make it out to be a pretty sharp-dressed game, the motion is jerky and the camera angles are horrible. The game seems to be very fond of the behind-the-back view, which makes accurate player control a far-off dream. The back of the box boasts "Death strikes at 225,000 polygons per second," but fails to mention that the "death" is the player dying of sheer frustration.

The only point in favor of this game is character variety. You can pick from several different characters, including a headsman, complete with his head-chopper, an elf with his bow, a goblin with two short swords, or even Torgo, the one-armed dwarf who beats his opponents into submission with his giant hammer. Too bad they look better on the select screen menu than they do in the actual game.

This game could have been good. With some gameplay tweaks, a better sense of camera angling, and smoother motion, it would have been a hell of a fighter. Instead it is a bleak reminder that all polygon games aren't as smooth as Tekken 2. If someone attempts to pawn this game off on you, do yourself a favor and just say no.