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Dragon Ball Z Budokai: 3

Wow, what can be said about this game that hasn't been said about dressing as Santa and throwing buckets of rotten fishguts into crowds of unsuspecting youngsters during a thanksgiving day parade? Practically a lot, so I'll refrain from comparing it to that, and use the previous installments as well as the show instead.

For starters, the first thing you usually notice... is well, what you see, and the first thing you usually see in a game, is it's graphics. The graphics on this game are far from top-notch, piss in the bushes fantastic, but compared to the very first Budokai, the graphics it has now, suit's it very well. Don't get me wrong, When Dragon Ball Z Budokai (henceforth DBZB/2/3) first came out, I was all for seeing my favorite fighters in three dimensions, but it soon got to the point where it looked 'faker' than it should with it's near perfect representations. Then, DBZB:2 came out and shocked everyone by switching instead to cell-shaded graphics, to achieve a more 'cartoony' feel than the first one I assume, and frankly it worked, but not quite well enough. If anything, it still retained the fakeness that had made the first one seem like a steaming pile of delicious feces. It did seem more like the show, but was done in a way that you could obviously tell was still a game.

It was at this point, with almost show like qualities, more so than the first, that fans realized what they wanted, or maybe we didn't know what we wanted, but the creators did... either way, DBZB: 3's graphics surpass it's predecessors by far. And when I say far, imagine throwing a rock as hard as you can, and multiply it by twelve, that's how far. The feel you get from playing it is more often than not like you are watching the animated series, only with life and ki gauges and whatnot, but none the less, show material. It still has the cell shaded graphics, but to a degree. It still has the three dimensional shine, but to a degree. the artwork for the characters actually seems like it has been drawn. You can see some lines where you would expect, and a lack of detail exactly where there should be. Krillin's lack of nose for instance, you can perfectly tell that Krillin doesn't have a nose. Even Kid Goku's eye's are rounded!!! Talk about attention to detail. All in all, I give the the graphics twelve thumbs up, which is about equivilent to... I dunno, 4.5 stars or something.

Next, we move on to the sound quality of the game. Not much can be said here. It's really basically a small addition to the already stale soundtrack they recycled from the first and second games, with voices for the new story mode and characters respectively. At least in this one, Incomplete Cell, and Perfect cell don't sound the same. They have a nifty re-vamped version of the character selection screen when dueling, and other new tunes for new stages and scenarios. I give the sound 3.9 headphones.

Since I'm not an indepth videogame magazine writer or anything like that, I guess I'll just skip whatever else is left and just dive right into the meat and potatoes, the actual gameplay.

This is where it gets fucking wicked, and even more like the show!

As for the controls, all of them are pretty much the same, save a few extra abilities, such as being able to now dodge opponents punches/kicks/energy blasts(like the show), by tapping the X button. This was instantly awesome once found out. We literally spent three to five minutes dodging each others attacks. Another plus is the insta-blast option they added, effectively eliminating the need for combos just to do a simple kamehameha wave. Now, instead, you simple press a directional button and O, and BOOM, insta-blast. An advantage to this is, now not only can you do it faster, but you and your opponent can (also like the show) do your beam attacks simuntaniously, and enter a battle to see whose will win.


Can we say instant transmission? Well, I just did, and the game does too, but only slightly. It's an extention of the X dodge, wherein it allows you to warp near or behind your opponent and attack. Again, cool.

Characters... There are a ton of characters, at least 40+, ranging from the original "Dragon Ball" all the way to "Dragon Ball GT". People like Broly (The Legendary Super Sayin), Bardok (Goku's Father), Cooler (Frieza's Brother),Omega Shenron (The One Star Dragon from DBGT) and even Kid Goku from Dragon Ball make an appearence. It also includes all the old characters, but beefed up with new moves, costumes or transformations. Hell man, Super Sayin 4 makes it's appearence!

Another really groovy thing about this game is that in story mode, titled "Dragon Universe" in this, you can achieve 'story re-enactments' by performing certain prerequisites during a match, such as, using super spirit bomb on kid buu, and so forth. ::two thumbs up::

So, as someone who has never played the game fully through, but played it enough to write a little something about it. At least enough to know that it's replay value goes almost to the point of being morosely through the roof. I give this game an 8.5 out of 10.