Preview: Dragon Ball FighterZ Closed Beta

Dragon Dragon, get the Dragon, Dragon Ball Z “Yaaaaaaah”. But should you get this Dragon? I spent an entire weekend destructo discing and loading up my special beam cannons, and what happens next will blow your nostrils!

I remember when fighting games were just that; Fighting games!

You’ve got your dude in the left corner of the screen, the most cherished position to be in since you don’t have to mirror the control scheme to perform your epic combos… And you have your opponent in the right corner of the screen starting with that last handicap. Then follows a countdown from 3 to 1 voiced by the low timbred vocal cords of some shady voice actor that ends in the word “FIGHT” gracing the CRT screen! And those days were beautiful; absolutely beautiful.
But what if I can add some RPG elements, an overworld and give free camera control to the player? Wait we can add a story and a “what if- spinoff” and maybe even do away with everything that is a fighter game and turn it into an MMORPG?

No! We’ve seen where this leads to… Luckily ‘less is more’, and Dragon Ball FighterZ brings back what we’ve missed since Budokai;
AN ACTUAL FIGHTER GAME! But is it any good? Is going back a step forward too?

“What enemy?”Visually? Yes!

Stepping away from the 3D free roaming to put more detail into the aspects of the game that really matter was a bold but smart move! The characters are in a 3D world, but since the camera remains in a fixed side view for most of the fights, it looks like we are finally getting all the graphic power to the most authentic Dragon Ball style ever created in a video game.

The Z warriors have never looked this good and watching the special attack cutscenes is like watching one of the recent animated movies. Even the screenshots look like stills taken from the manga! This is the most loyal depiction of the universe ever! Even if it’s less “open” than the previous installments. Everything looks crisp and feels in place. The animations are next level and they don’t feel pushed or pasted into place; it all adds up seamlessly to the perfect fighting game within the Dragon Ball universe.

They say “God is in the details”, well same goes for a perfect Dragon Ball game! When your foe deflects a blast you can see in being redirected to a rock in the background. The action when playing goes so fast but seeing this tiny detail for deflecting a mere ki blast is just so satisfying for the keen eye. When performing a finishing move when your opponent’s health is low will result in a “Destructive Finisher” where the screen will pan out to the planet you’re on seeing the blast obliterate part of the world your on.

Now this wouldn’t be so special if I were talking about a generic pre-rendered ki beam but there’s one for almost every type of finisher, the Destructive Finisher will take into account the colour, shape (beam or round explosion) of the blast and here’s the “God” to the detail; even direction will be accounted for! This will make the Destructive Finisher a fan favorite to pull off and it will always be satisfying and different for the character, ki type and planet you’re on! The blasts and explosions light up your screen in a plethora of bright colors and smoke effects. Just have a look at the amount of animation that went to the crowd of the Tournament Stage… I felt like a kid reading the manga at every crowd shot! There’s more than one god in the details here!

“It was weird to pull this special move on an enemy Goku”Now a good fighting game has to play like a good fighting game and this game goes like a freight train! The action is fast and without compromise! There’s no lag at all, this is a beta remember, it was bound to go wrong somewhere (more on that later). We played it on the regular Xbox One if you’re interested and it didn’t feel like graphics were scaled down at all. It ran smoother than Master Roshi’s dating moves! The moves are easy to pull off (after looking for the specials online) and depend on directional stick inputs. You have your dashing rush attacks that will fill up one bar of ki so you can add a combo after those by going for a special ki attack. It’s easy to pull off both of the specials as they only change in directional input depending on your left or right position. I just spammed my Father-Son Kamehameha at my opponents. You can add even more power to it by pushing another button when performing your special to burn some more of your 7 ki bars and have it result in a devastating yet satisfying Destructive Finisher. Since this is a tag game you can switch to your other teammates while doing a special attack to add another special attack by your other tag character to really get a maximum amount of stuff happening on TV and it’s way cooler than swapping during regular combat, let’s face it!

“These colors just scream BEAUTIFUL”Now to the part where the Beta let me down… It was impossible to get online the first hours… I just couldn’t enter an online match… I had to fight the CPU in all of my battles… And while I did have a blast (no pun intended), I really wanted to show my new skills against an unsuspecting beta tester. Might have been only me encountering this problem, and I’m sure that will be fixed without question but still, it was a smear on an otherwise perfect first preview of this new fighting game. Once I got online I had to pick a fighter name, not tied to your console’s Gamertag. Afterwards, you select your region and join a 25 person lobby. The lobby consists of chibi characters and you can customize your own! It’s just darn cute yet it doesn’t feel out of place at all! In this cute lobby, you can go the replay reception to see your saved replays to push that great victory in the face of your losing friend when he comes over. You can just relax and walk around waiting for an opponent to be found. The online battles feel great and here again no LAG whatsoever! Just fluid gameplay against mostly unsuspecting beta testers who had no clue how to pull off a super move! No complaining here!

 

 

 

 

 

So to come back to my first question, is this a real fighting game?
Yes, and I dare even go further to say that Dragon Ball FighterZ is the Dragon Ball fighting game we’ve wanted since Akira Toriyama brought us that weird monkey kid fishing in the most peculiar way…

Dragon Ball is back and might just be the King of Fighters this year! Let’s hope it carries this momentum to the finished game!

“Even Krillin looks like he can actually do damage! And probably die again afterward”