Dragon Ball Raging Blast for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

When I downloaded the Xbox 360 demo and played Raging Blast for the first time, I thought instantly of the Tenkaichi series on the PS2 but with more polished graphics. When I played the official release, I thought of...the same thing, except a little worse.

Let me first start off with the good aspects of the game. It feels very much like your playing the anime. There were many moments that felt like I had been able to recapture certain scenes from the show and then the customization of the characters is also a nice bonus. The what if stories are interesting as well. As for the other.

Many issues plague this game. Let me start off with the biggest flaw of this entire game...the camera. The camera is like watching from a first person point of view, a mentally ill child lost at a carnival and you have the pleasure of seeing the entire show. Many times did it just get in the way or bring the excitement of the battle to a screeching halt because you can't see the other player or its at an angle where you can't see anything at all. The worst part is that you have no control either over it so you are stuck with an automatic system that completely ruins the experience.

Another problem I have is that the story is poorly told. Basically, its the same thing as in Tenkaichi except this time it looks a little smoother graphic wise. If you've never played a Dragonball game, then this one not be the one to start out with. One would probably have absolutely no idea what is going on.

The game also suffers from glitches. There were many times when my character would just freeze in battle or my energy beams would go right through the other character at point blank range. I also got stuck in a wall once and had to completely start over. It feels choppy and sluggish as well and the controls are also a pain in their selves to master. Prepare for about 2 hours of control training to become somewhat effective in both online and offline battles.

In summary: "Looks good but thats it".

I have played a couple of the Dragon Ball Z combat games and enjoyed them. This one, however, was nothing but frustrating. I could not tell any difference in difficulty between very easy and very hard in the dojo. I could never get a chance to ease into the controls because the CPU was tearing into me every second. My fighter never had a chance to breathe no matter what difficulty level I had it on. Also, the controls seemed too complicated. The previous versions of the game I had played had very easy controls to learn and could be executed smoothly. In Raging Blast, the controls require too much had movement to be completed smoothly. On a smaller but slightly annoying note, the dialogue that you have to click through to get through all the steps is rather redundant and tedious. In short, the game renders frustration too easily and too quickly to take the time to learn to adjust. Not worth the frustration or several hours of time in the dojo to learn the rough and complicated combinations.