Dragon Ball: Evolution

by McKinley Noble
April 08, 2009 00:00 AM PST

While it's certainly not the best (or worst) fighting game available on the PSP, Dragon Ball Evolution just might surprise hardcore DBZ series purists with its accessible fighting engine. Well, emphasis on "might." Despite horrible graphics, spotty A.I., and some severely unbalanced characters, Dragon Ball Evolution on PSP at least delivers fast action and multiple modes of play.

Not even a tried-and-true Dragon Ball fighting formula can't save Evolution from it's inevitable movie-cash-in niche.

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Alternate Reality Dragon Ball

In Dragon Ball: Evolution, martial arts monkey boy Son Goku is re-imagined as a skinny high school kid who takes afternoon Kung Fu lessons from his cliche-spouting grandfather, Son Gohan. After the game teaches you some button-mashing basics, Gohan is attacked and killed by the alien menace Piccolo, leaving Goku with no choice but to "fulfill his destiny". In the main story mode, this entails gathering the seven mystical Dragon Balls, stopping the apocalypse from wiping out the Earth and arbitrarily beating the living snot out of several other characters in the game.

Aside from Dragon Ball: Evolution's main story, the game thankfully sports a few modes for people looking to wring out some replay value: plot-driven arcade storylines for each character, a mission mode, network battles, and galleries for unlocking extra content. Like other Dragon Ball games, winning fights will earn you letter grades and Zeni, the in-game currency needed to buy things from the game's gallery. It's a surprising amount of content for a cash-in title, but nothing except the network battle mode is really worth the time you'll invest. Speaking of which, it takes about three hours to fill out the character roster and other extras.

De-Evolution

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai veterans will easily master Evolution's fighting system, and casual gamers should be able to get by with toning down the difficult and button mashing. Close combat is relatively simple and easy to learn, and the task of executing special moves like the Kamehameha Wave has been cut down to a single button command (unlike Dragon Ball Z: Budokai's fighting system). At the very worst, Evolution's fighting system suffers a lot from the fact that it's nothing more than an uninspired Dragon Ball Z: Budokai clone. The foundation's there, but it's obvious that some polish is sorely missing. Once I learned how the game wanted me to button mash, Dragon Ball: Evolution ceased to be any kind of challenge. Most fights are a simple pattern of spamming kicks, following up with a special attack, and repeating it until your opponent dies. It's even worse when the CPU starts to hiccup in-game. A lot of times, I'd unintentionally gain the upper hand in a fight when my A.I. opponent abruptly paused to block at thin air for ten seconds on the opposite end of the screen.

Of course, my major problem with the game is that it looks like crap. Dragon Ball: Evolution's drab, blocky character models alone look especially bad against static, boundary-less arenas, but most of the crisp fighting animations are undercut by the overall sloppy interaction between the game's fighters and environments. In-game voice clips don't help do anything to bring the characters to life, which would be difficult anyway thanks to each character's blank, static profile.

There's not much to see or do after a few hours with Dragon Ball: Evolution, but it's still fun for the short time you'll spend running through the game's story. If you're dying to play this on your PSP, then rent it knowing that your money isn't going to be wasted. We can't promise the same thing if you're going to pay for the movie, though.

PROS: Simple combat system, plenty of modes to play, surprising amount of extra content for hardcore fanatics
CONS: Horrible graphics, weak story, severely unbalanced character roster (pick Mai for the easy victory)