Dragon Ball GT Final Bout

This is one game that can stay in Japan

Publisher: Bandai
Developer: Bandai
Genre: Fighting

Rather than wasting my time with some colorful journalistic jargon, I'm simply going to keep this short and sweet: Dragon Ball GT Final Bout is utter crap.

Having said that, I'm sure you want to know why. So let me explain. The gameplay, or rather the lack of it, is the primary issue. This is mainly due to the diabolical controls. A good fighting game has fluid, accurate and responsive controls. DBZ's are choppy, inaccurate and totally unresponsive. You press a button to punch, and there's a huge delay before the character executes it. This is very frustrating, especially when combined with the spastic character animation, which jerks more than a horny gamer on a Friday night.

Adding even more misery is the choppy camera movement. It's like being stuck in a spin dryer. One minute the camera is pointing up in the sky, the next it's zooming in on another character. The thing that makes it all horrible is the fact that the camera doesn't pan smoothly, it just switches from view to view, so you often get completely lost. Sometimes you don't even see the other character who you're supposed to be fighting.

The final kick in the nuts is the fact that there are very few fighting moves. The basic moves are dull to say the least (kicks, punches, feeble ranged moves and seemingly random flurries), and combos are nearly impossible to pull off. The end result is the most limited and frustrating fighting action yet seen on the PlayStation.

On the positive side, the graphics aren't too bad. The polygonal characters are very true to their anime counterparts, and the cool sound helps add audio-visual appeal. There's even a cool anime FMV on the front end. But as we all know, graphics and sound don't make a game, it's the gameplay that counts, and that's something that this game simply lacks.

If you're a Dragon Ball Z fan, then you may like this game, simply because it stars all your favorite Dragon Ball characters. But to be honest, you might as well go out and buy all the toys -- at least they're more controllable.