Bloody Roar

Bloody Roaris Virgin Interactive‘s answer to the manyTekken clones around.

At the end of the 20th Century a growing sense of crisis prevails, and the worldis a consumed in chaos. Amidst this confusion, people with strange abilitieshave suddenly appeared. Their physical strength and athletic talents far exceedanything previously witnessed.

In the heat of battle, they pour forth rays of light and metamorphosis intohalf-animal, half-human form. You take control of one of the eight charactersavailable either playing in two-player mode, one-player arcade mode,time-attack, survival or practice mode. Alternatively, the “watch” functionallows you to watch a demo between any two of the 8 main characters.

Playing the Game

In the arcade mode you get the choice of eight characters: Yugo, Long, Gado,Alice, Mitsuko, Fox, Bakuryu, and Greg. After defeating each one, includingyour twin, you face the final challenge, Uriko, who’s as tough as they comeand very hard to defeat, but persevere as it is possible.

While playing each round, providing the “B” or “Beast” symbolis showing on your energy bar, you can activate the Beast Mode. Thisallows your character to change into his/her’s own specific beast and obtaina larger set of moves in order to defeat your opponent, but they can do thesame. Both yourself and your opponents have the power to strike back and returneach other to their original incarnation at any time.

While in Beast Mode, activating the Rage Mode will add extra power toyour moves and give you a bigger edge over your opponent for a short time.

There are also a number of bonus modes which reveal themselves to you asyou progress, such as “Vitality Recover”, in which being on the last ebb oflife doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the game as you can build it up againby kicking the crap out of your opponent.

Options

Game OptionsSeveral options are available to you. The characters can be altered from theirnormal appearance to either give them big heads or shrink them down tochild-size with the Kids option.

You can also alter the computer and human match points from one to five. Thedefault is two to give a best of three scenario, but be warned that youcan’t allocate yourself five points and your opponent one as it will only allowequal points to give a comparatively fair fight.

Other options which can be altered are the difficulty level, the time limit,and toggles for blood effects and wall destruction, the latter allowing you todestroy walls by throwing your opponent against the wall at any time other thanthe final round, which makes it possible to fall out of the ring.

Sound
Basic options are available here: Volume levels, a stereo/mono toggle,and a selection of background music tunes.

Memory Card
Either load, save, or auto-save, the latter being a feature I haven’t comeacross in a Playstation game before.

Graphics, Sound and Playability

The graphics are nothing short of excellent. They’re colourful, they interactwell, and most importantly, they move around the screen at an incredible speed,save for the moment when one player loses and as the final smack is replayedthree times in quick succession, it is again repeated but in slow-motion whichwill either allow you to cheer your victory, or groan in defeat.

The sound is superb as well. Great use of surround sound puts you right in theheart of the action. Crashes and bangs are the order of the day, combining withechoing effects as one of you is sent to the great fighting arena in the sky.

The playability is very good although it takes a while to get used to thecontrols, and for a time you’ll find you can get a lot further by randomlypressing the buttons, sending your opponent flying into next week.

Overall

While the graphics and sound are first rate, and fairly good playability,what lets the game down is that once you’ll have completed the arcade modewith each character there’s not a lot to go back to, save for the two-playermode.

Usually what this game provides would be all that’s required of a 3D beat-em-up,but since 1997, Soul Edge has set the trend by adding an extra, moreinvolved, mode in which you have to collect weapons by beating the variouscharacters across the game map, which adds an element of adventure that mostfighting games miss out on.

One nice touch to the package though, is the Art Gallery, which allows you notonly to view the FMV sequences for characters already completed, but alsoa number of drawings and finished graphics during the game’s development.

Finally, if you didn’t care much for Soul Edge‘s “Edge Master” mode,then Bloody Roar will quench the thirst for those hungry for the nextTekken installment.