Giant bunnies beating the hell out of bat women? where do I sign up?
04/04/02 by Dan Chubaty
The Game: A sort of Re-make of Bloody Roar 3 from the PS2. It does, however boast several new improvements and additions to make it a contender
Gameplay: Bloody Roar is the type of fighter that appeals to all people offering a very simple premise and easy to learn gameplay.
Fighting games, as you no-doubt understand are all about beating the crap out of your opponent, this is what you get from BR. The Gameplay modes include: Arcade, versus, training and a slew of team battle options. It's simple to see that the game isn't exactly full of depth like, say Virtua Fighter 4 or even Soul Calibur, but what it does offer is fast, frantic gameplay with a few innovations to keep it fresh. The innovation is the ability of the characters to change into their alter-ego beast form. You'll see giant white rabbits, moles, tigers, bat women and so on. This transformation is made when your attack gauge fills up. When transformed players can inflict more damage and complete a special attack that can absolutely devastate an opponent. The trick is to know when to use your beast powers, as it can potentially leave you wide open and drastically slow down your speed, it can also take away a small fraction of your health. With this feature, players have to weigh the opportunities and strategize the best they can to be successful. Other than that the gameplay isn't incredibly deep. Bloody Roar uses two attack buttons and one blocking/throwing button allowing for an easy to learn, tough to master type of game.
The cast of characters, as well as their beast forms is diverse and strange, but lack a lot of flash or originality. Names like "Jenny" and "Alice" don't help either.
Computer AI, in most fighting games is either incredibly retarded or impossibly hard. BR: PF seems to have found a decent average between these two extremes. It's by no means easy; as a matter of fact I found it hard as hell even with the difficulty set to 1. But with a little practice you'll stomp the AI players, at least on easy anyway.
Visuals: This is the GameCube's first real 3D fighter and it truly shows what the GameCube is capable of. The character detail is amazing and incredibly life-like, from the sexy women to the snarled face of a tiger it is plain to see that the characters are constructed with great care and detail.
The backgrounds are also detailed and animated as well. They do seem to be limited in size though and a few of them are also pretty plain and lack a lot of the great texturing seen in the characters. This is no doubt to keep the framerate up. Lighting effects and particle effects are abundant. When a character takes a hit, you'll know it with a bright flash of light. Also a nifty feature is the use of anime style sequences to detail the opening and ending story of each character.
Audio: The music in the game is filled with guitar riffs mixed in with weird sounding horns and whatnot. A few of the tracks are actually decent while most of the others will make you wonder what the hell kind of crack the developers were smoking. It's like mixing all the possible music genres into this weird sounding music. It probably appeals to the Japanese market, but here, it just plain and simple, isn't very appealing.
Sound effects are, for the most part, pretty standard but definitely get the job done. The voices as well, are well suited to each character. One annoying gripe however is the lack of voice in the animated ending to each character, the characters mouths are obviously animated, but you'll find yourself reading text, it's a very strange feeling as I'm pretty sure that the voices were included in the Japanese version. No worries though, as you wont know what the hell is going on anyway.
Control: As mentioned before BR has a pretty simplistic control scheme. Two Attack buttons (A and B) and one blocking/throwing button (Y) are all it takes for offense. The X button is used to transform into beast form and while in that form, used to perform beast attacks. The L and R buttons are used for sidestepping in either direction. Overall the control scheme lacks depth but does a commendable job and allows for a lot of moves and combos to be performed.
Replay Value: As far as fighters go, Bloody Roar: Primal Fury is probably a little light on the extras. You can unlock new arenas, characters and modes by playing through the arcade version. But still, when compared to games like Soul Calibur, which allows you to unlock a dizzying amount of objects, this game falls a bit short. As for multiplayer, it is as expected a main draw for fighting fans and will no doubt keep fans battling each other for quite some time.
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