Bloody Roar 3

When a new fighting game comes around you start to take notice and sit up and look around, now I'm a bit of a fan of the bloody roar series of games so I was quite looking forwards to this latest outing. Would it be as good as the Dead or Alive 2 game or would it fall flat on its furry snout and be over hyped?

Well Bloody Roar 3's story is once again just as confusing as the previous incarnations and in the days of superlative graphics and gameplay of titles such as Dead or Alive 2 and the soon to be released Devil May Cry, you get a feeling BR3 was rushed out of the door. I'm afraid I'm getting bored with the same old same old so this game doesn't rate all that high on the gameplay or originality. But here goes nothing.

All the old BR2 characters are back in all their glory, Yugo the Wolf and Long the Tiger being firm favourites, alongside Sheena and Jenny. The problem is that not much has changed, ok the graphics have been kicked up a notch and the gameplay on a whole is much smoother, more fluid, but it still feels stilted compared to other games of its type. Soul Calibur and well DOA2 again.

So are there any new characters? Well yes, three that's it, well that's all I could find. And they're not all that great, apart from Xion: The Unborn, who's actually quite a bad ass. But the problem is that BR3 when it comes down to it is really BR2 with better graphics, tweaked gameplay and a few other changes. The moves are pretty much the same, they've added a few new ones, some more chain linked combos and another super move to add to the Beast Moves you can do. You can totally rage out in BR3 at the cost of your beast bar for the rest of the match, it doesn't last long but it does allow you to kick stupid amounts of ass in a short time. Once it's gone, it's gone, and you're stuck as a human...well...as you see that's the cost of raw power of strategy.

It's a hard game I can tell you this, even at the lower difficulty levels you'll probably end up wanting to throw the Ps2 out of the window and the disc with it. But keep at it and you'll find that if you can beat all the fights without a continue, you get to take on Uranus the uber boss, beat her and you can play her * yawns * I'm sorry but I really am getting so damn jaded with the idea that if you do this without continuing you can play this, crap character. The stages are pretty much all the same and lack lustre at that, one or two have interesting features but there's nothing really to save the game from being another very short lived thrill.

I never thought I would say this but it's time that Bloody Roar was put to sleep for good I think, or the whole system of gameplay revised and changed for the next inevitable title in the series.

The quality of this title for the PS2 is quite shameful, let down by boring, repetitive gameplay and a lacklustre execution. The cut scenes are appalling and explain nothing of the plot at all, which once more is totally incomprehensible. You get very little reward for playing, two characters and some gameplay modes which require you to spend hours and hours on this boring game, good for a quick fix and that's about it. I can't give you anything that saves BR3 from being just another mediocre fighting game in the genre that needs a very big shake up. My advice is buy Dead or Alive 2 that at least has the longevity and wide array of costumes. Bloody Roar 3 has 3 per character Dead or Alive 2 has at least 5-8 per character and they rock.

The only saving grace in BR3 are the graphics for the characters, special effects, nice and flashy and the nice sounds but that's it, the animation is nice and fluid but the whole thing falls flat with the resort to button pushing to win tactics. So my advice is unless you're really desperate, give this game a miss. Unless you like mindless button pushing and a overly simple move system?