"Worst. PS2. Game. I. Have. Ever. Played."

[Note: I am dispensing with my usual criteria for this review, for reasons that I’ll make clear.]

I try.

I try to understand how the Super NES, which I’ve always considered to be a monumental disappointment, can be considered by “mainstream” America to be one of the best home consoles of all time. I try to see the appeal of Tekken, one of the most horribly complex fighting games of all time, and where most players are lucky if they master a quarter of the techniques for one character. I try to find something, *anything* about the complete implosion of SNK that makes even an iota of sense.

I try to understand why gut-wrenching, back-breaking, headache-inducing hard (does any other game reviewer regularly use terms like these, I wonder) is supposed to be ALWAYS good, while anything “easy” is supposed to ALWAYS be bad. In my experience, the opposite is closer to the truth the vast majority of the time. And I’m especially perplexed as to why a game with eight difficulty settings can’t be incredibly easy on the easiest setting. I mean, if it’s too easy to you, you can always increase the setting, right?

Most of all, I try to figure out why games that get virtually unanimous praise from every outlet imaginable *invariably* leave me screaming and fuming and wanting to hurt somebody (Exhibit 1: Mortal Kombat, SNES), whereas nearly all my favorite games don’t get so much as a one-page mention in a magazine.

I try, and I try, and I try. And understanding always eludes me.

So it is with Bloody Roar 3, the latest installment in the anthropomorphic combat franchise. A game I don’t remember receiving wide accolades, but, if my experience is any indication, must be considered the greatest game of all time by the “mainstream”.

Start with the game system. Like many 3D fighters, it’s a lot different from the basic/special/super, stand/crouch/jump system of most 2D games. It has a dizzying variety of attacks (yes, a movelist does take up a whole page), not to mention setups, chains, juggles, etc. It’s been over eight years since Tekken pioneered this type of gameplay, and I’ve yet to understand the appeal of it, let alone why it’s supposedly superior to 2D gameplay that I can actually get used to. Mock Capcom all you want, but they understand that they *have* to keep it at least reasonably simple if they expect anyone at all to get into it. I don’t see why 3D has to be so radically different, especially since Bloody Roar has always had essentially 2D gameplay. (And of course, the beast aspect just muddies the waters even more.)

But perhaps I’m being a little unfair to Tekken; at least I’m able to do some good with most of the characters. At least I can do simple chains and (sometimes) connect with the big single shots. I haven’t gotten to first base with any of the Bloody Roar games. They’ve always been stacked toward huge juggles (check out an ending video sometime, if you’re actually that good), using the terrain, and squeezing every last hit out of combos, things that take time to master, and things that I’ve NEVER, EVER been any good at. Nothing at all in this game comes easily...nothing. And before you angrily denounce me for “blaming the game” because “I’m not good enough”, let me tell you that I was *more* than good enough for a plethora of fighting games...World Heroes, Darkstalkers, Battle Arena Toshinden 2, and the Fatal Fury line are a few. I could learn them. And I could beat them.

Which brings me to my next point...the difficulty. I am so incredibly sick of games that are absolutely, torturously hard on the easiest difficulty. Look, I don’t care what anyone says, the easiest difficulty should be *easy*. Period. No exceptions. And by easy, I don’t mean “play one it for three years and maybe you’ll get comfortable”, I mean “so easy a child could win on it”. (Many video games are marketed to children, so that’s not an unreasonable assessment.) Capcom understands this. Konami understands this. Namco understands this. Heck, even Midway gets it more often than not. Why couldn’t Activision or Hudson?

So how is this game so hard, you ask? Well, if you’re on the easiest difficulty (which I was, and never once deviated from), the fights start out pretty easy. But if you get to Kohryu, the 5th stage hidden opponent, he’s a nightmare. One hit from him, and you’re eating a 15-hit combo. Drop your guard for an eye blink, and he’s all over you. He blocks everything. He counters everything. He knows every aspect of the game system inside and out, so unless you do too, you’re toast. I must have lost to him ten times in two days. And even he’s a patsy compared to the boss, Xion. Ever have an opponent you run down to a sliver of life, and then he rips off some impossible 50,000-hit combo (I exaggerate, but not by much) and steals the win? Ever have an opponent you couldn’t touch at all, and he stomps you flat without even breathing hard? Well, Xion’s the kind of guy who does both in the same match. Did I mention that this is on the EASIEST difficulty? I always thought difficulty referred to the entire game, not just the preliminary matches. Guess Activision/Hudson are just behind the times.

It’s times like these that I turn to my Gameshark. Mock it all you want, but it, more than anything else, has been instrumental into making my PS2 games fun instead of unbelievably torturous (which became painfully obvious with my very first PS2 game, Gran Turismo 3, but that’s another story). In fact, “fun without a Gameshark” is one of the highest praises I can give to any game. Well, Bloody Roar 3 certainly didn’t qualify, so I gave its codes a whirl.

And promptly ran into a swarm of roadblocks. See, there isn’t any infinite health code, CPU does nothing code, or anything else that would be of direct help. I knew this going in, of course, but felt confident that one of the other codes would help me. Other than the “1P/2P always so-and-so” codes, they were all for the special in-game modes in the game. All righty, start with No Blocking. Whoops...turns out that the special mode codes didn’t allow you to select your character; it defaulted to Yugo. Still, thanks to the code, I was able to go all the way. Saw the ending, the end credits, then went to the options gallery to see what I unlocked. Whoops! Apparently, beating the game with a special mode didn’t unlock anything. Wanting to find out why, I then tried the “unlock special modes” code. Turns out that the special modes were supposed to be for vs. mode matches ONLY. It took the Gameshark to set them on the regular (arcade) mode, and they didn’t count as normal matches. (I also noticed that the “characters played” counter never went up when I had a special mode going.)

My patience running *extremely* thin at this point, I decided that if I couldn’t unlock everything, I could at least get all the endings and salvage SOME value from this game. So I soldiered on, this time with the sudden death code (one hit wins the match), entering an ADDITIONAL code to auto-set the character I wanted, since I couldn’t pick it normally. I figured that, even after I lost (which was an absolute certainty), this way would still be a lot faster than if I tried to win “honestly”.

My final illusion shattered after I continued. Turns out that if you continue with a special mode going, it goes to the regular special mode match screen...effectively ending the arcade game I’d been working onto to that point.

In other words, the only way I was getting an ending was if I did it “honestly”, getting hammered by Xion untold hundreds of times in the process, or if I activated a special mode and was able to get *all the way through the game without continuing*.

At that point, I said the hell with it. Many SNES games made me give up in utter disgust, including the aforementioned Mortal Kombat, but this is the only PS2 game to ever do so. I’m sick of jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop to get what I want. I’m sick of unbeatable bosses. I’m sick of unbelievably complicated gameplay. And I’m sick of losing...yes, that’s right. I play to win, and when there’s any match I can’t win (on the easiest difficulty, have I made that clear?), as far as I’m concerned, it’s a horrible game. As if BR3 didn’t have enough evidence of that already.

This game is a complete waste of money and an utter disgrace to the PS2. If I were within the Activision or Hudson organizations, I’d be embarrassed to be associated with this utterly irredeemable piece of garbage.

You’ll note that I didn’t review the modes, graphics, sound, etc. And I won’t. When a game completely fails the most elementary test...fun...nothing else matters.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/27/02, Updated 05/27/02