Bloody Roar: Primal Fury

"If this is Bloody Roar, then where's the Blood?"

Back when people were still making games for the Nintendo 64, the N64 lacked A LOT of games in certain critical genres. Most notable were its lack of any good RPGs or fighter games, and it seems as though the Gamecube is going in the same direction as the N64. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury is basically an updated remake of the year old Bloody Roar 3 for the Playstation 2. Since Bloody Roar is basically the only fighter game for the Gamecube, it should see at least mild sales due to lack of competition at the very least. If you are a fighting game fan, and own a Gamecube, then you're probably going to want to buy this game no matter what I say. But for the casual gamer, does this game merit a purchase?

Graphics

I have to say that the graphics are superb. The character models have a very high polygon count, and animate very fluidly. The game runs at a constant 60 fps, and the textures are very nice. Some of the transformations present some very complex geometry, which the game handles without a hitch. The transformations have some nice effects (such as motion blurs, heat waves, particle and energy effects), and overall are very well done (although some of the characters, like Alice's Bunny or that Chameleon guy, have pretty stupid transformations).

And it's not just the character models that's awesome, the backgrounds are just down-right sweet. You'll fight on top of buildings, in a temple, or on an air-craft carrier. Most levels feature people in the backgrounds, which are actually well animated by themselves (not just cheap sprites, like cardboard cutouts like most games would do). Cars drive by, planes take off, and people wave, all in the background while you fight it out (although admittedly you'll have little time to gawk at the backgrounds).

The characters talk in the game, but their lip movements and the words are more-often-than-not WAY off (if you've played the game, you know what I mean). It sure would've been nice if I could listen to the original Japanese voice overs, but NO! People don't like subtitled games! Bah!

Gameplay

The characters in the game are a pretty mixed bag, you have your usual hotties such as Alice, Jenny, and Uriko (and Shina, if I don't mention Shina, all the Shina fans will beat me!), and your heroic goodie-goodie good guys like Yugo. Ganesha is your typical fat wrestling guy, although I wish they would've put in an old man (martial arts expert) in the game to fill up all the stereotypical character roles. Oh yeah, and Chronos and Uranus are cool too...

The Game play has the usual quarter-circle / half-circle button combinations to pull off attacks and specials. But the main novelty feature of the series is your ability to transform into a big hulking beast. While in beast form, you can do certain special move and use extra X-button attacks. Also, while in beast form you will be faster, do more damage, and be healed gradually. As you can guess, using your beast form is omni-important. You also have a hyper-beast form which is basically the same as your beast form (most of the time), except it can freeze time and you de-transform after a set amount of time (unlike your beast form, where you de-transform after a set number of hits). Whenever you are hit or hit someone, you Beast meter fills up, allowing you to transform into the above-mentioned Beast. However, you can transform whenever you want to (although it will sacrifice some of your health meter.

However, the Beast form presents the most frustrating point of the game in all. You can have your enemy down to almost no health left, almost no time left on the meter, and have your health bar almost full. In most games, at this point it would be impossible for your enemy to win, but that is NOT so in Bloody Roar. He gets his beast meter up to max, and transforms into his hyper-beast form, freezing time. He uses his special move, dealing crap-loads of damage to you, and for some reason HEALING HIM (while in Hyper Beast form, you can DO YOUR SPECIAL MOVE AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT!!). It is actually quite possible for someone to make a last-second comeback using those cheap Beast and Hyper-Beast forms. All I'm really asking for is perhaps a little more balance in the game play. The game acts like some giant see-saw, where first you're in your beast form, beating some butt. Then your beast form wears off, and he uses him, and it goes back and forth like that. And the one who is on top of the see-saw when it ends is the winner.

Replay Value

To unlock everything you'll have to beat the game 16 times, which will probably take you 6-7 hours or so, seeing as the enemy AI is often VERY tough. Plus that and you have all your extra modes like survival, team battle, time attack, and of course, Versus mode! Overall this game should keep you busy for about a week or so. If you're only interested in the one-player experience, you should probably just rent the game and beat it in the time you have it. However, if you're buying it for the multi-player experience, you'll probably want to buy this.

Storyline

Ok ok, almost every fighter game as an incredibly weak storyline, but heck, would it hurt to give a fighter game an INTELLIGENT storyline? I think not! Although Bloody Roar does very little to change the lack of a storyline in fighter games. The game's intro is well animated, but it's pretty boring, perhaps because nothing is really going on in the intro (and the lack of a good theme song). Every time you beat the game (well ALMOST every time you beat the game, not every character has an ending), you get an animated cutscene to watch, which is usually about half a minute long.

In the anime-style cutscene, the character's mouths move, but they don't talk (a cheap dialogue box appears on the bottom of the screen). It would have really been cool if they would've voice-acted the animations (oh wait, then they'd use the same voice actors they used in the rest of the game. Perhaps on second thought...). The cutscenes don't make any sense when you put them all together though. Each of the animations only hints at some storyline, which probably doesn't exist. Overall, there doesn't seem to be any coherent storyline, other than people are beating the crap out of everyone for no apparent reason.

Conclusions

If you're a casual Game Cube owner, rent this game, you might enjoy it. If you're a hardcore fighter game fan though (and there aren't many of THOSE around anymore...), you'll want to buy this game, for a lack of anything better to buy at the very least.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/16/02, Updated 09/16/02