Dom Robinson reviews

for Sony Playstation

Distributed by
Virgin Interactive

Price: £44.99

Players: 1 or 2

Bloody Roar is Virgin Interactive's answer to the many Tekken clones around.

At the end of the 20th Century a growing sense of crisis prevails, and the world is a consumed in chaos. Amidst this confusion, people with strange abilities have suddenly appeared. Their physical strength and athletic talents far exceed anything previously witnessed.

In the heat of battle, they pour forth rays of light and metamorphosis into half-animal, half-human form. You take control of one of the eight characters available either playing in two-player mode, one-player arcade mode, time-attack, survival or practice mode. Alternatively, the "watch" function allows you to watch a demo between any two of the 8 main characters.

Playing the Game

In the arcade mode you get the choice of eight characters: Yugo, Long, Gado, Alice, Mitsuko, Fox, Bakuryu, and Greg. After defeating each one, including your twin, you face the final challenge, Uriko, who's as tough as they come and very hard to defeat, but persevere as it is possible.

While playing each round, providing the "B" or "Beast" symbol is showing on your energy bar, you can activate the Beast Mode. This allows your character to change into his/her's own specific beast and obtain a larger set of moves in order to defeat your opponent, but they can do the same. Both yourself and your opponents have the power to strike back and return each other to their original incarnation at any time.

While in Beast Mode, activating the Rage Mode will add extra power to your moves and give you a bigger edge over your opponent for a short time.

There are also a number of bonus modes which reveal themselves to you as you progress, such as "Vitality Recover", in which being on the last ebb of life doesn't necessarily mean the end of the game as you can build it up again by kicking the crap out of your opponent.

Options

Game Options

You can also alter the computer and human match points from one to five. The default is two to give a best of three scenario, but be warned that you can't allocate yourself five points and your opponent one as it will only allow equal points to give a comparatively fair fight.

Other options which can be altered are the difficulty level, the time limit, and toggles for blood effects and wall destruction, the latter allowing you to destroy walls by throwing your opponent against the wall at any time other than the final round, which makes it possible to fall out of the ring.

Sound
Basic options are available here: Volume levels, a stereo/mono toggle, and a selection of background music tunes.

Memory Card
Either load, save, or auto-save, the latter being a feature I haven't come across in a Playstation game before.

Graphics, Sound and Playability

The graphics are nothing short of excellent. They're colourful, they interact well, and most importantly, they move around the screen at an incredible speed, save for the moment when one player loses and as the final smack is replayed three times in quick succession, it is again repeated but in slow-motion which will either allow you to cheer your victory, or groan in defeat.

The sound is superb as well. Great use of surround sound puts you right in the heart of the action. Crashes and bangs are the order of the day, combining with echoing effects as one of you is sent to the great fighting arena in the sky.

The playability is very good although it takes a while to get used to the controls, and for a time you'll find you can get a lot further by randomly pressing the buttons, sending your opponent flying into next week.

Overall

While the graphics and sound are first rate, and fairly good playability, what lets the game down is that once you'll have completed the arcade mode with each character there's not a lot to go back to, save for the two-player mode.

Usually what this game provides would be all that's required of a 3D beat-em-up, but since 1997, Soul Edge has set the trend by adding an extra, more involved, mode in which you have to collect weapons by beating the various characters across the game map, which adds an element of adventure that most fighting games miss out on.

One nice touch to the package though, is the Art Gallery, which allows you not only to view the FMV sequences for characters already completed, but also a number of drawings and finished graphics during the game's development.

Finally, if you didn't care much for Soul Edge's "Edge Master" mode, then Bloody Roar will quench the thirst for those hungry for the next Tekken installment.