![]() ![]() The moves and combinations, however, never feel terribly original nor inspired. Players familiar with Tekken will recognize a familiar set of combo attacks. The game's basic are like any other fighter, with a decent amount of kicks, attacks, and combos and when combined with the Beast form attacks, which enhance or even transform weak attacks into monster attacks, the move set is more than healthy. The motion-capture work never gets in the way. The collision detection is tight and consistently good, and everything moves with a quick clip. The characters are amazingly fast and responsive. What Bloody Roar does well is to give players a superb set of basics. ![]() But there are solid nuggets to take away from the game. This year's set of beasts (or remakes of beasts) appears to resembles popular anime and manga - see Xion's similarity to The Guyver, the anime and manga. Obviously, there's the whole beast transformation dynamic, which is essentially the same as it was from the beginning. Bloody Roar 4 is still pretty much a basic 3D fighter, with little innovation, or any kind of spark of creative life - or special qualities - that differentiate it from the pack. By playing and beating the Career mode, players gain monetary units to unlock and purchase what appears to be hundreds of pieces of artwork, dozens of offensive and defensive moves, and new levels. ![]() Among other additions, such as new modes of play, the Career mode offers an immense amount of unlockable features. And like Bloody Roar 3 (but originated in the Dead Or Alive series), players can unleash a devastating hit that punches an opponent through the invisible walls into an entirely different arena altogether. The new characters add a more distinct aerial dimension to the game, with straight juggles and juggles off the breakable walls providing more punishment to the already ridiculously long combos. This 3D fighter brings a few wrinkles to the fighting table, with the manual ability to transfer energy from the Life Gauge meter to the Beast Gauge, a neat addition that gives players more flexibility in their preferred playing style, and more time in the more advantageous Beast form. What's important is that you get to hear the inane dialog and fight as a wild mole, rabbit or chameleon. There is a lot of guessing to be done to follow the story, but the backstory is really just a 2D prop for the beasts to exist. But despite the Stone Soul having been locked away, riots and earthquakes boiled up again. After the so-called XGC (X-Genome Code) Incident and the riots, earthquakes and disturbances that followed, the people of Earth, blaming the entire thing on the calamitous Stone Soul, finally calmed down. Utilizing the concept of Gaia, Hudson created a world in which life forms progress through natural selection, as creatures that might have made it through the natural selection if they had continued to evolve, but didn't, called the Unborn. The storyline is quite humorous and silly on its own, but the poor localization brings it to a new height, with odd sections of silence, moving mouths with no words coming from them, and jokes that stand still like a fork in Chunky Soup. If you've played any of the previous games, you'll recognize these beasts, slightly remodeled and upgraded for this new game. Each fighter has his or her own special look and creature design, fighting style, and set of beast drive attacks. Several of the series' long-term fighters are still around, such as Bakuryu, the Mole, Alice, the Rabbit, and Shenlong, the Tiger, and this time newly added characters include Nagi the Spurious, Ryoho and Mana, Jenny the Bat, Reiji, the Crow, and a few others. Gameplay Bloody Roar 4 is a 3D fighting game with a hook - the transformation of your chosen character into a beast or creature, but in any case, a "Zoanthrope" of some kind. But you will get a good amount of speed and graphical flair, some cool-looking beasts, and some of the worst dialog and localization this side of Mars. Sound a little cynical? Well, maybe you should play Bloody Roar 4 and see for yourself (you should probably rent first), but if you are interested, don't expect anything of the caliber (pun intended) of Soul Calibur, Tekken, Virtua Fighter or Dead or Alive. Here's a game that's brought to the US because it's already made its money in Japan and with little cost expenditure, bringing it to the US should translate into gravy income, even if it's only a little. What it looks like we have with Bloody Roar 4 is profits. Bloody Roar 4 offers enough changes and alterations to differentiate this one from Bloody Roar 3, but Hudson hasn't given the game the dedicated depth or fine precision of Sega's latest Virtua Fighter or the intense charisma, combat stylization or playability of Namco's Soul Calibur series, either. ![]()
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