So, do you like action movies? How about anime? Well then, how about games you can play? Well, two out of three ain't bad, right? The Bouncer is best described as "The Action Movie." While there is points in this movie where you can play the game, it's rare, and short. Basically, for every minute of fighting, there is a minute of cut-scenes. If a Final Fantasy angered you due to the amount of cut-scenes and points where you can't play the game, the Bouncer will make you want to kill small children. Or maybe that was just me.

The plot of the game is rather sweet. The game takes place in one night, (and you can finish it in one sitting) as the bouncers rescue a friend, Dominique, from an "Evil" corporation, fighting cool cyborg ninjas, some woman with outrageous hair and less clothes than Britney Spears, and lots of robots. You choose one of three bouncers for each fight, then the next segment of the game is shown from their perspective. The problem with that is they only split up once, and for a brief period of time. To get the whole plot, you have to play thru with each bouncer fully once.

So, you ask, what is so wrong with the game? Well, when you do actually get to control the characters, the battles are badly made. It seems they focused on the cut-scenes, then marketing realized they wouldn't sell a videogame without any point where the player could control the characters, so in one week they made the fighting points. You choose one fighter before each fight, and press the x button for low attacks, square for middle, and triangle for high attacks. The harder you press the buttons, the stronger the attack (to a point, you can't drop a baboon on the x button and have the bouncer kick the enemies leg off). The problem with the battles is that you don't really lock-on to enemies so you attack the air a lot. Your attacks are also blocked by the enemies a lot. Volt will bodyslam the badguy, but if he's blocking, (aka: holding an arm over his head) Volt will just hit the floor beside him. Also, if you knock an enemy onto the floor, it will knock every enemy near it onto the floor too. This sounds cool in practice, but the same can happen to you. One of the computer-controlled bouncers gets knocked down, knocking you down as well, taking off life. But I wasn't really near him? So, doesn't matter. You are still on the floor, precious life drained. That and the fact you can't pick up furniture or other objects in the environment to fight with makes each fight happen just the same.

So is the game worth playing for the plot? Why yes, if you can get through the fighting areas. Luckily you can save before each fight. The plot is very very very anime inspired, I'll warn you ahead of time. Also, another cool factor is that if your bouncer gets the finishing kill on an enemy, they get bp (exp) and after the fight can use this bp to raise levels (attack, defense, life) or learn special moves. I recommend building up the levels before special moves, for the moves don't work all that better than regular attacks, plus are hard to execute. So you bouncer will gain levels, and the enemies will keep up on the levels with you. And you can play through a second time with the built up characters. After three times through the game, the final boss gets a 3rd or 4th form, which makes him super-hard. There's something to look forward to. Another cool fact is that every enemy in the game you win against, they are unlocked in the 4 player fighter, or the level trainer. While a four-player fighter sounds cool in theory, the controls are the same as the regular game, and just makes you want to put in DOA2:Hardcore.

What liked: The character art is really amazing. It's the guy who does FF8 and 10. The world looks like the world of FF7, but it's not. The movie part was stellar.

What disliked: The part where you played.

What to expect: A lot of movie, bad controls in fights.

What not to expect: Final Fight. A game without cut-scenes.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: It's a movie posing as a videogame.

Ratings on:

Control: 4 - It used the Dual Shock 2 for you could push buttons lightly or softly, but the characters couldn't ever lock-on enemies and all I said above.

Graphics: 8 - You will no doubt measure them to FF10, in which case they look like N64 graphics, but as one of the first gen games for PS2, they were the best at showing the graphic capabilities at the time.

Sound: 5 - I would give it higher due to the guitar shredding that every ninja loves, but the announcer that says the game's title when you start up creeps me out.

Style: 3 - It's original due to the fact it is a movie posing as a game. That's all that is new in it.

1st hour: 9 - This movie rawks.

5th hour: 6 - Beat the game. Cool movie, bad game.

1st week: 4 - Beat the game twice, can't beat it a third time. Enemies too hard. Realized there are better games I could be playing. (Namely, psx games.)

#1 reason why I hate this game: Couldn't they have spent SOME time on the gameplay? The movie is sweet.

by Hawke