Dragon Ball Raging Blast PS3 Review

Dragon Ball Raging Blast

PS3 Review
Namco Bandai
Released: November 2009

Namco Bandai is back at it again with the release of Dragon Ball Raging Blast, the latest fighting game to release within the Dragon Ball franchise on the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3.

Dragon Ball Raging Blast is all about taking the Dragon Ball franchise, and putting it up there with other fighting games on the market such as the recently released Tekken 6.

Dragon Ball Raging Blast follows Goku and the rest of the well-known characters from the hit anime franchise as there is a quality story that revolves around the main part of the game.

The gameplay experience here for this fighting game is nothing to truly write home about, which is a shame considering the great game modes it entails, which you will read about below.

The game features different attacks for you to play around with, such as basic attacks, special attacks, and more. The problem though is the way in which you pull off some of these special attacks. The way the game uses the shoulder buttons kind of takes away from the experience, making it far less intuitive and smooth. The difficulty and poor execution in regards to how the special attacks work turns this more into a button-mashing affair than anything else.

Visually this is a good-looking game, as the character models are spot-on with some great colors and such. The issues arise though in regards to the areas surrounding the characters. The detailed characters compared to their surroundings just doesn’t fit unfortunately.

Audio is presented in both Japanese as well as English voice tracks for fans to enjoy. This is true to the anime franchise which is a bonus. The sound effects are lackluster though.

The main game mode here is known as Dragon Ball Collection, and is basically the story mode of the game. You end up going through the whole Dragon Ball universe as you take part in a variety of classic battles that have taken place.

As you go through the story, you are introduced to a variety of different story plots, as well as scenarios. These scenarios basically take you through the whole universe of the anime hit, a treat that fans will surely enjoy.

There are plenty of other cool game modes as well, including a World Tournament, the Super Battle Trial, KO Attack, and more.

These consist of your more standard arcade fighting modes, tim eattack modes, etc. Players are able to unlock more modes as you go through the game, adding incentive to playing through it all.

There is plenty more to be had here as well though beyond what I have already described…among them being the history of Dragon Ball feature. This allows fans to go back and learn about the history of the franchise. You can also enjoy a customization feature that lets you customize classic Dragon Ball characters.

To top it all off, you are also presented with one heck of an online gameplay experience, that was silky smooth during testing on both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Botom line, there is more than enough here to please fans of the franchise.

Dragon Ball Raging Blast is not a perfect fighting game, but it has enough in regards to game modes and playability to be well-worth picking up for fans of the anime franchise.

Graphics: 7.0 Great character models, but the rest is below-average.

Audio: 7.4 Having both English and Japanese audio tracks are nice.

Gameplay: 7.2 It gets the job done, but involves too much button-mashing.

Replay Value: 8.2 I love all the game modes, online is a lot of fun.

Final Score: 7.7