Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team

"Kamehamehumdrum"

Developer: Namco Bandai Games
Publisher: Spike
Release Date: October 19, 2010
Platforms: PSP
Genre: Action, Fighting


Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team (DBZ 3T) is one of many recent iterations in the anime’s video game franchise. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a story that revolves around a person named Goku, which comes from a distant planet, who defends Earth from other foes by fighting them in spectacular bouts. In these fights, they use a lot of flash and beams and shout a lot, but the real feat is the superhuman abilities and speed the combatants apply. It’s so immense it goes to the point of destroying planets with their sheer strength.
 

DBZ 3T offers you much of the same in that line and the line of its previous games. Using the trademark cel-shaded style known to the series, you’ll get to experience all your favorite characters in doing fast paced combat.
 

The demo contains one part single player fights and another multiplayer aspect, both containing six characters, from which Goku is one of them. With little to no other knowledge you’ll start a fight with your selected character, together with the other opponents. You can pause the screen to see a small list of moves, but other than that it’s simple use of button smashing. There’s a button to sprint, one to dodge and 2 attack buttons, but there are other combinations available as well. A nice touch is that you can use Quick Time Events (QTE) to give you some spectacular payoffs, if you succeed. But after a few times, the appeal for it will quickly fade away and it will just become a lengthy move.

The only difference between this and the multitude of DBZ games is that this one focuses on Tag Team battles, as the name would suggest. Unfortunately, it makes fairly little difference overall and thus DBZ 3T is much more of the same thing, once again.

It is hard believe the full version will add anything more appealing to warrant a purchase for the game. Most likely it will have a story mode and a challenge mode and all that. But unless you’re a hardcore DBZ fan and/or have an addiction to playing with some friends, there is no reason to get this over any of the other bland games.

As a sidenote: I attempted to view if multiplayer would add an extra layer to this rice cake, but after waiting in the lobby for half an hour with no 1 man joining, I decided to call it a day. So, don’t expect to meet a lot of strangers. They won’t be falling out of the skies for a quick tumble, like in the series.

Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team will be out on October 19, 2010 for PSP only. Kamehamehumdrum...

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed.