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Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury

Take command of Goku, Gohan, Vegita, Trunks, Goten, Vegito, and Gotenks and train your little, spiked head off in preparation for the showdown of the century! Majin Buu’s in town, and he’s turning everyone to candy! Sweet, succulent candy! That great, pink, diapered blob is on a rampage since snipers dropped his puppy, and the only way to subdue his rage is to charge up to SuperSayan3, and drop a sensu-fuelled kamehameha wave on his big, fat face!

Or, you could stand in front of him and punch him a lot.

If that opening paragraph made any sense to you, you’re already familiar with Dragonball Z. This latest installment of the Gameboy Advance series, Buu’s Fury, picks up the show’s storyline just after the end of the Cell Games, rejoining our plucky band of infinitely powerful, glowing heroes some seven years after the last super-creature threatened the destruction of the planet. Goku’s still dead (like that will stop him) and Gohan’s going through a high-school superhero fetish complex. It doesn’t take long, however, before the natural cycle of tournaments and villainy repeats itself and dark wizards and demon kings are hatching plots to revive the most powerful being ever to wear poofy pants and babble baby-speak before obliterating a municipality.

Yes, Buu’s Fury tracks the same storyline as the show, straying only occasionally from the hour’s worth of plot strung out over thirty-something episodes to add a little extra mummy-fighting fun with Trunks and Goten to round things out a little. Unfortunately, the game does not have the advantage that the show does of endless flashbacks and looped animations of Goku scowling to fill time. Instead, it relies on tired stat-level goals that will leave you wandering back and forth between two or three screens, fighting the same four bad guys for hours on end!

This is not an exaggeration. This is what you do in the game. In order to progress, you need to break down certain gates that give you access to the various levels. Those gates have a number printed on them: 80, 100, 120, etc. Before you can progress through the story, you must level up your character to the point where he can smash through the gate and go on. From this point you are stuck until you beat up enough baddies. This requires a trek through the woods, desert, caves, wherever you are, repeatedly running between the same two groups and pounding the A button to punch them until dead.

Sound fun? It’s really, really not. There are a few tricks on the B button, special energy attacks that do basically the same thing as punching, but from range. But the timing on them is a little slow and it only serves to slow down your progress further. Gathered equipment and earned stat points only serves to speed you up slightly until you get to the other side of your numbered gates and onto a slightly tougher batch of enemies (tougher, of course, means that they are able to withstand four punches again until you level up). There are a set of arm and leg training weights you can equip that speed up your experience climb, but you sacrifice the precious movement speed that carries you between the respawning baddies.

The gates also have a color associated. You’re in command of five characters, after all! Everyone in your party must be of a high enough level to get through these gates, because you never know who is going to be called upon to get into a particular area. I’m sure it looks like fan service to grant access to all these fighters, but with no real difference between them, it just means more thug-punching.

None of this would matter if the payoff for boss fights and tournaments was cool. A little variation? A little energy attack pattern to figure out? Nah, more punching! In every single boss fight save one, the matter is as simple as punching the creature repeatedly into a corner and wailing on him until he buckles. This works every time, assuming the blasted story doesn’t inject itself suddenly, ending the fight even as you were about to win to claim the enemy too powerful and to run and fight another day.

So what are we left with? A not-quite-RPG where stats and equipment only serve to fuel an endless cycle of sameness. An overworld map and Dragon Radar for a quick Dragonball hunt that, while a nice diversion from the primary plot, leads to more of the same and often renders you lost, looking for an area to fly to so you can level up a bit. A collection game of character statues that kinda works if you want to fill up your museum. And an opportunity to keep playing once it’s over, to build your skills endlessly for more of the same punching.

There is a multiplayer mode that takes advantage of the longevity of the game, allowing players to trade items or fight in an arena. This mode gives you access to more characters than in the story mode, even to bosses. It’s a nice addition for people with link cables.

Graphically, the game weighs in right at the middle of the GBA’s capabilities. Nothing spectacular going on, but nothing spectacular should really be expected. The menus and game UI are all clean and very functional, and characters look like the characters they’re supposed to look like, so all is well on that front.

Sound effects are a very mixed bag. The music is generally a horrible, endlessly looping affair, probably bearable were it not for the fact that you have to spend so much time in one area, flitting between screens. The “Super Sayan” sound is annoying, and forced me to decide between turning down the volume or turning off the powerup. Everything else is pretty good, especially the oft-heard level-up guitar riff.

I can’t in good heart recommend this game. If you’re a big fan of the show, I’d say watch the show again. Neither Buu nor Vegita come across nearly as funny (or menacing) here as they do in the episodes, and Dragonball Z just isn’t Dragonball Z without all the growling and pep talks from Goku. But if you’re the sort who absolutely needs to live it out yourself, and are capable of putting yourself into a Zen trance while you punch your way back and forth between the same two screens, this game’s for you.

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Tags: Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury

Posted by Brad on Oct 12th, 2004 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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