Bloody Roar 4

"A fun and stylish overlooked fighter."

A lot of magazines and fighting fan extremists will try to convince you that the Bloody Roar series should have gone under long ago. Whether it's the easier combo system or the all too often comparison to other fighters, Bloody Roar's beast has been left out in the cold. However, the truth is that many mainstream reviewers are glossing over the point of the Bloody Roar series. The game was built on style and just flat out fun, not on spending days learning the basics.

GRAPHICS (9)- Anyone who's played any past PS2 Bloody Roar is in for a treat, because the cleaner and more realistic Primal Fury/Extreme models finally catch up to the PS2. Faces and expressions are clean and full of personality. No other 3D fighter that I've played can convey personality in a face like Bloody Roar. Whether its the demented evil look of ShenLong or the cocky smirk of the new Reiji, these guys shine personality. Likewise, each character comes with 2 unique costumes and some characters even have 3 now. Moreover, often the third costume can change your animal's color and appearance. For example, when you choose Alice's third costume you get a brown rabbit instead of the standard white rabbit. It's just the little touches that add to a nice graphical presentation. Also back is the blood, which always added that extra ''OUCH'' to your characters attacks.

Backgrounds are also cleaned up a bit. The darker city atmosphere is back which has always been fitting for the type of game Bloody Roar is. There are some really cool additions like a level where you fight on a swinging platform while a surrounding crowd cheers on. Unfortunately, there are also a few problems with the design. More so than past Bloody Roar's, invisible barriers are scattered in every level. In Primal Fury, the invisible barriers were actual fences or walls, which seemed more realistic to smash through. It's hard to take a cool highway level design seriously when you start to wonder who built the invisible forcefield around the part you fight on. Again, since realistic objects marked the breakable walls in past Bloody Roar games, I really don't see why we had to go back to invisible walls. Overall, though, the backgrounds are quite nice.

SOUND (5)- I just can't be too generous here. After coming off of Primal Fury and Extreme, there really is no excuse for rehiring the 2 cent voice actors. This is even more of a problem because, again, Bloody Roar's characters have a lot of personality. Often your character's graphical win pose will seem a lot more energetic than the voice that accompanies it. Not only that, but the timing for many lines is off, resulting in end battle cutoffs and lackluster speeches. The story as it is isn't very strong anyway, so good voices should have been a must here. The only motivation to complete Arcade Mode is a good laugh at the horrible delivery of the last few lines. Most of the battle victory lines are passable, at least. It's just a shame this part of the game got glossed over so horribly because it really detracts from one of the best things Bloody Roar has going for it, its characters.

Music is standard Bloody Roar issue. Perhaps a few less guitars and a few more jazzy beats, but it gets the job done. Not as bad as the voice acting, but again, there's room for better sounding tunes and instruments without loosing the backbone of the Bloody Roar music.

GAMEPLAY (8)- If you haven't played a Bloody Roar before, you owe it to yourself to at least rent one. It's really a fun fast paced style of fighting. In most 3D fighters, you are required to learn an entire character's moveset in order to really enjoy a good combo. Bloody Roar, however, presents many of its string combos with easy access by just mixing up your punches and kicks. Still, while this is fun at first, there's a deeper system at work with individual movesets, counters, two blocking styles, and even more defensive moves. You can certainly beat an easy computer opponent by banging buttons, but good Bloody Roar human players will have answers to your combos every time. It's that sort of easy offense learning style that makes Bloody Roar a great game to play with friends who aren't fighting game masters. They can still have fun dishing out huge combos and attacks but will eventually have to learn the whole package to compete with a good computer or human player. With the fast paced action, Bloody Roar creates an adrenaline rush while other types of 3D fighters require you to back off and wait for your opponent's next move.

As far as Bloody Roar 4 itself, if you HAVE played Bloody Roar 3 or any port above Bloody Roar 3, you know what you're getting here. Roughly the same movesets, roughly the same animations, and roughly the same gameplay modes are all here from the last ported Bloody Roar. There is also some PS2 slowdown at some points too thanks to Reiji and high background action levels (really only 2 levels). For some reason whenever you get these 2 together, watch out. You will suffer some very noticeable slowdown. By themselves they are okay, so you won't notice it very often. But this is really something that should have been addressed before release. I would have definitely gone higher in score if this problem had been resolved.

What's really new here is Career Mode, which I hope makes it into future Bloody Roar's. In Career Mode, you fight through a sphere grid map and earn skills and gameplay enhancements. Some of these include speed boosters, guard break priorities, and cancel timing. You can even learn other characters' moves and switch them in and out as you please creating some truly unique combos. The point of Career Mode isn't to make a dominating character, but one that fits your style. There are even ways to mimic the gameplay feel of Bloody Roar 3 if you don't like the speed changes given in Bloody Roar 4. If that wasn't enough, if you make it to the other side of the grid, you earn a third Beast Drive (Super Attack) for your character. Since each character has a third Drive, you'll be going back into Career Mode just to see them all. Even better is that you can take your saved character back into arcade and versus to stack up against other people's altered characters.

The Bottom Line- Bloody Roar, despite some rushed technical and sound issues, still delivers a strong punch to its competitors. It's just a shame that a lot of reviewers shun the game for other fighters. With the lack of any newer fighters out there right now, I would think more people would be open to something different. Give it a rent sometime. You may end up being pleasantly surprised.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/03