Developer – Dimps
Publisher – Namco Bandai / Atari
Available On – XBOX 360, PS3

With Dragon Ball first airing throughout Japan in 1986 it’s not surprising to find a slew of video game releases throughout the years based on one of the most popular manga and anime series ever. DragonBall Z (DBZ) games, more specifically, have been pumping out on a regular basis since the SEGA Mega Drive days. Now we have Burst Limit, DBZ’s first foray into the next-gen realm of HD graphics and online play in what feels like a continuation on the old series as well as an introduction to a new era of DBZ games.

If you’ve played DBZ titles from series such as Budokai or Tenkaichi, you’ll of course be quite familiar with the play style of Burst Limit. A mix of strength and speed, the variety of projectile and melee attack combinations across each character hosts good versatility in combat necessitating fast reaction times against contextual thinking.

It’s a lot more exciting than the anime series, I can tell you that. I do enjoy DBZ on it’s own, but it’s well-known tendency for dragging out plots and battles across several episodes wears my patience far too thin. What I do like though, are multiple fast, action-packed battles with two crazily overpowered near-godlike beings duking it out against a vibrant background teeming with shiny special effects. This is Burst Limit.

Whether you’re a fan of the anime or not, Burst Limit has a lot of fast action and seeing such a familiar series re-vamped into vibrantly colourful HD helps boost the appeal for any DBZ or fighting fan. In fact Burst Limit does well at appealing to both audiences of DBZ veterans and those new to the series. The single player campaign titled “Z Chronicles” is a break-down of 3 separate sagas that occurred in the anime series. With Saiyan, Frieza and Cell sagas included each fight symbolizes a conflict within the original storyline putting the player in control of the ultimate victor.

If you’ve never seen DBZ before, it may be all a tad confusing as the dialogue before each battle doesn’t really cover the current synopsis. If you have seen it before, you should get a kick out of replaying a good chunk of the familiar sagas. Of course this implies again exactly what of the story they’ve left out – so we know what to expect in terms of single player for the next DBZ installment, and this is one of the gripes I have with the DBZ fighting series.

Burst Limit does a great job of taking a familiar fighting formula and boosting it to the next generation. Not only is everything far prettier, all the extra mode inclusions and battle variants freshen things up to make this a substantial step-up in the series. If only it wasn’t such an obvious first installment, clearly it won’t be too long for the next DBZ fighting game, then the next, then the next…

This continual stream of DBZ releases does help the significance of Burst Limit, as it is the most substantial upgrade the series has seen for a while. Items known as “Drama Pieces” are now brought into play, unlocked and selected before battle – these are triggered by specific events in battle and each have a different effect. It’s also great that you can turn these bastards off if desired as each time one triggers, a short video (including NPC dialogue) is played. At first this adds some character into combat and is a big difference, but also continually breaks up combat and can make things a little disjointed. Some of these drama pieces can be a little frustrating too, especially in the unlocking process but as with (seemingly) most games out of Japan these days there’s lots of little things to unlock.

Drama Pieces aren’t the only addition, starting a single versus CPU match involves making a few more new choices to the series, such as a partner who’ll help out in battle when necessary. Ki, your mighty power essence no longer requires manual charging. Ki is required for most powerful abilities, in other installments this required a manual recharge from players. You know that iconic DBZ “I’m about to take a huge dump” scream-charge. While there’s still a lot of bowel-clenching exuberance, it’s good to see Ki automatically recharge so fighting doesn’t completely stop every minute as both fighters just stand and scream to charge.

When it gets down to the actual button mashing, Burst Limit is largely similar to it’s predecessors. Controls offer a variety of abilities such as rush and smash attacks, throws, blocks, counters, deflects, projectiles, charged projectiles – there’s actually a very wide variety of attacks. You’ll learn to pull them off quickly though, as while each of the 21 characters have all different abilities in terms of attack ranges and strengths, they are all mostly executed in the exact same and fairly basic manner (such as Up+B for an ultimate attack). Don’t expect any excessively long chain combos.

Mastering Burst Limit then becomes a case of exploring the range of characters and abilities available (often chosen before battle) and mastering the greats. Unfortunately Burst Limit is a big case of choosing the best players, with a few characters having suspiciously underpowered abilities and little chance against superior fighters such as Goku. Picking a better player can provide an unfair and oft unseen battle advantage, so learning each character and their potential abilities is a must for any solid contending of Burst Limit.

Once you’ve worked out the few balance issues, Burst Limit is a great game to master online and off, with friends or bots. Having both Training and Tutorial modes is an excellent move especially when they’re both so useful. There’s extra time wasters such as Survival modes and bonus content but outside of standard single player or arcade play, multiplayer is definitely a huge drawing point for the value of Burst Limit.

Online multiplayer for Burst Limit seems like a very competent service for countless hours of ranked or non-ranked worldwide fighting. It seems this way, but unless you’re in a more populated country you may have some issues finding a game of respectable latency. The frame rate will always coincide with latency, so if you’re secluded by a water locked continent of dirt such as myself you may have issues finding some nearby like-minded individuals. Then consider that Australia doesn’t even qualify as a selectable country (we’re off in “Other Countries”) and I’m still trying to get a decent speed game working online. From what I have played though, it was an exciting, yet laggy affair.

Not only does Burst Limit expand upon the DBZ fighting series with a range of additions and tweaks, but the extended multiplayer options ensures Burst Limit to be full of value. If you’re a fan of DBZ the entire trip is a homage to a great series while newbies will find great coverage of the DBZ universe and characters. Action is fast, colourful and highly accessible to fans of fighting games so don’t let the clear anime orientation of this title steer you off if you’re not a fan. Ultimately Burst Limit shapes up as one of the best DBZ titles for some time, ushering in what will hopefully be a whole new era for the series.

DragonBall Z : Burst Limit

86%

The Good –

* Attractive and fast paced combat really feels like you’re on a next-gen console.
* Accessible control schemes for a great variety of DBZ deities.
* Rewarding multiplayer and single player content.

The Bad –

* Some overpowered characters/abilities.
* Multiplayer easily inhibited by extreme latency.
* Feels like some content holes, and we know the next one can’t be too far off.