Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit (PlayStation 3). It’s been a mighty long time since I got to enjoy a DBZ fighting game. I remember playing Dragon Ball GT back on the PS1 and actually having a pretty good time with it. Well, this is a new series, a new style, and several console generations later. So what’s the verdict? Lets begin…fight!
The first thing that got me excited to try out this title was the visual styling. It’s got a highly-detailed cel-shaded aesthetic that really does make it look like you’re controlling an anime in real-time. Explosions and special effect are also something to behold.
The fighting engine itself is also quite impressive. The animations are smooth and your controller inputs seem to mesh perfectly with your character’s actions, even when all hell is breaking loose on screen. One feature that I really enjoyed was that when you cause you enemy to become airborne (or vice-versa), it completely changes the make-up of the fight. The character will recover right in the air as opposed to slamming into the ground and at this point your fight will be taken skyward. You can jet back and forth just as you would run along the ground and it definitely adds to the pacing of each fight as there is very little recovery time from big hits and keeps the action fresh at all times.
Being a Dragon Ball Z game, there are obviously a ton of story components that long-time fans of the series will appreciate. I’m not current in my DBZ lore so I couldn’t tell you if there are any factual inaccuracies in the dialogue, but what I was able to grasp I enjoyed. The story itself is presented through a series of “story pieces” that are unlocked and shown in real-time right in the middle of your fight. These story chunks are unlocked based on your character meeting certain criteria, such as performing a certain combo or exhausting your opponent without being hit, etc. These bits are interesting and I’m sure fans of the series will thoroughly enjoy them, however, they did take me out of the zone a couple of times and a few were downright frustratingly common.
I also had a chance to try out the online mode which worked remarkably well most of the time. It did, however, suffer just a bit in some of my more intense matches as it was attempting to catch up to my lightning-fast reflexes (/sarcasm).
Overall, I think that Burst Limit is a very solid fighting title that fans of the genre and the Dragon Ball series owe it to themselves to check out. KAMEHAMEHA!
