Bloody Roar Extreme - Review

Added August 11th, 2003 by EminaZ

Introduction:

Originally, the series was developed exclusively to Sony’s Playstation hardware. First to debut on a non-Sony hardware was Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, a revamped version of the already released Bloody Roar 3 for Sony’s Playstation 2. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, released on 3/20/2002 for the Gamecube, featured updated graphics, sounds, and even some extras. Bloody Roar Extreme is the same game Bloody Roar: Primal Fury except for the add-ons. Will this game cripple down the forgotten, or be loved and adored by the loyal fans of the series?

Gameplay:

Like all other fighting games out there, your mission is clear as water; defeat your opponent for a certain number of rounds, in a certain amount of time and you win. Although the mission is clear, the way you go about achieving that mission is rather a big factor of whether this game gets the shaft from the audience or not. This game, unlike the current crown holder for fighting games Dead or Alive 3, takes a more fantasy approach to fighting. It is less martial arts intense, and more street brawl like.

This game is actually more similar to Capcom’s Rival Schools series. The whole feel of the game is very much like the Rival Schools series. This is perhaps due to the fact that most of the fighters are extremely young looking. But unlike the Rival Schools series, the fighters here aren’t fighting because of their different schools and conflicts, but more for a prize money, or so they think.

What’s great about this game is that you could change into an animal upon demand, this is a great and somewhat fresh new concept that Hudson introduced in order to make this game unique. This mode gives you many advantages, for example healing. While in your beast mode, 30% of all the damage done to you while in normal human mode will automatically slowly heal, which is great if you are low on life. But in order to transfer to your beast mode you have to have enough juice in your beast bar, if not then you have no way to becoming the true monster you are unless, of course, you change into your Hyper Beast mode. The Hyper Beast mode does not require any of your meters to be full, but it would be advantages to you if they are, you could easily activate your Hyper Beast mode with a click of the button, you will still slowly heal 30% of all damage dealt to you while in human mode, but this mode require some life to activate; if you meter isn’t flashing red. This mode also holds its own advantages and disadvantages. Here is a list of all the advantages/disadvantages it has over the Beast mode:

Hyper Beast Mode

-Requires life to activate.

-Your Hyper Beast mode bar will slowly decrease until you are human again.

+Unlimited supers could be executed.

+Stops time.

+Become faster and fasten recover time for some moves.

+Adds new moves.

Beast Mode

-Requires your beast meter to be full.

-You only get one super before changing back to human mode.

+The less you get hit, the more you will stay in this mode.

+Adds new moves.

This game truly does have diversity, but with diversity also comes the responsibility of making sure the game is balanced, which is something that is not only lacking, but should have been fixed in the first sequel to the game. Some characters are clearly stronger then, some supers take so much more damage then other and some characters simply don’t have a chance against other characters. While this game is a very welcome addition to the Xbox fighting category, this game still needs its balancing redone and some moves are a bit too long.

Graphics:

Currently, Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive 3 holds the crown has the prettiest fighter, will this game take that title now? The short answer is no, but this game does hold its own when compared to some other fighters, namely Microsoft’s Kakuto Chojin and Midway’s Mortal Kombat 5: Deadly Alliance. This game never looked so good before. While it certainly doesn’t take full advantage of the Xbox hardware, it certainly tries too.

What degrades the graphics are some of the special effects, while generally the special effects are fine; they do get a bit hectic at times. While doing a super, for example, the whole background become a rainbow of colours; everything becomes too bright too fast and makes you wonder what is going on. Then to top that off, ever now in then, if you finish a character off with a super the whole screen, sometimes, gets a colour invert and is shown four times at different angles for the ultimate seizure causing effect.

The graphics are generally good, just remember to close your eyes if you kill an enemy off with a super. Quality varies in stages and character animation. The text could use a bit cleaning up as it is too grainy.

Audio:

The audio is nothing to cry about nor is anything to cheer. The audio is actually surprisingly better then what I first anticipated, some fighting games make the game feel bad because the collision hit sound sounds like two pieces of plastic colliding together. The sound effects, and the background music are fine. You could control the level of volume from the options menu, just like all fighting games.

What is extremely disappointing about the sound is that in the CGI endings for each character, there is an extreme lack of background music and a no-show for the sound effects. All you get is 2 or 3 lines of text so you could comprehend the story. The background music for all of the CGI movies, except for one or two, are the same. It really is sad, the CGI movies are beautiful work and it is sad the there is no good audio to accompany it.

Controls:

You have to attack buttons, “X” is punch and “A” is kick”. With these two buttons alone you are to win the fight. Unless you change into your Beast Mode or Hyper Beast Mode. If you do so, then you would be able to use the “B” button as another attack button. It is the strongest simple attack for any character. You could also pull off some neat combos with the few buttons at your disposal. Another disappointment is that you can’t actually walk in full 3D with ease. You would have to press either of the triggers on the Xbox controller to basically strafe. You have 2 options on how you would like to block. You could choose the classic 2D fighting game style (Pressing back on the controller.) or you could choose a more 3D style (Pressing a button to block, in this case “Y”.), either way, blocking is simple and whole control scheme is basically fine, and could be adjusted upon your will. It do isn’t sometimes feel like the character isn’t as responsive as other games, but generally you shouldn’t have a problem with the controls.

Replay:

While Hudson did a lot of goodies for the Xbox owners to play around with, it still isn’t much. Every time you finish the game with a new character you will unlock something. Which is great. But the stuff you unlock are generally nothing big. Yes, you could play in kids mode (Small characters with big heads.) and yeah you could play in big heads mode (Normal size characters but with big heads.), but that doesn’t really holds up too much. Like Dead or Alive 3, you will also have the a theatre mode where you could watch all the endings again and again, but the lack of audio in the CGI movies will not lure you to doing so. You could also play with other minor settings in the game, you could remove the walls so you could Ring Out and opponent, or you could weaken the walls so you could destroy them easier and then Ring out an opponent. Some nice additions, but shouldn’t be basis of what the audience must depend on.

Summary:

While it is new to Xbox, Bloody Roar: Extreme is indeed a welcomed addition to the Xbox vastly growing category of fighting games. While this game does have its downs in almost every category besides controls, it is still a nice fighting game if you are a fan of that genre. The lack of sound effects in the CGI film are probably the biggest disappointment. There are some useless modes to fight in, like Kids Mode and Big Arms Mode which will distort the proportion of the characters. But that doesn’t really add to the gameplay or experience of the game.