The Bouncer

"Sometimes, I really think it would have been better if they just made this game into a full-fledged motion picture..."

The Bouncer IS a good game -- don't get me wrong. Before you read any further I will say that if you don't own, or have never played this game, then by all means give it a shot. You have nothing to lose, and it will offer some entertainment.

The biggest problem with this game? Too much plot at all the wrong times. It doesn't make any sense to have the characters fight three bad guys -- which get defeated extremely quickly -- and THEN go back into the plot. This happened way too many times, and it began to make me wonder whether this concept should have been made into a game at all, because Squaresoft clearly had a good plot going, but they just couldn't seem to grasp the fact that people like their plot in chunks, not in sporadic bursts. It really breaks up the consistency of the game, and it makes it hard to get into. Hopefully, if Square ever makes a sequel, this problem will be hammered out.

The story, while not really completely original or groundbreaking, is still extremely entertaining and interesting. You definitely develope some compassion for the characters in the game, and they all have their own stories and reasoning for being involved in the unfolding of the overall story. Basically, to sum the plot up in a nutshell, a rich and power-hungry man kidnaps a girl that all three of the Bouncers are very fond of and they must go rescue her. There's more to it then that, but that's the basic gist.

You get three characters to choose from -- Kou, Sion and Volt. They all have their owns starting stats, which vary immensely in some spots(for example, Volt starts out with a LOT of HP), and they all have some different specialized moves as well.

There IS leveling up in this game -- just not in a way that you might have expected it. As you fight you get Bouncer Points from killing enemies -- and you MUST be the person to put the finishing move on the enemies, otherwise you don't get any points. This is one of my biggest complaints about the game, because, even though you may have reduced a boss' health bar down to almost NOTHING, another one of your fellow Bouncers can come along and take the boss out, therefore losing all of your points. I tended to use a cheap strategy which consisted of letting my comrades beat on the bosses for a little bit, and then I would go in and finish them off, therefore to conserve life. Regardless, when you beef your characters up enough, this no longer becomes a problem as you can beat most of the enemies with ease.

Leveling up is quite a bit of fun, and you ''rank up'' as your character becomes stronger. You can choose to upgrade the characters life points, strength and lastly, their defense. Then, you can also upgrade their moves, which, will some of the last moves on the list are a little bit costly, are still worth getting. For example, just by getting the first two of Kou's ''special'' moves, you can become super cheap and beat up most bosses quite easily. Is that really the right way to go? No. But it ensures that you'll get through the somewhat troublesome parts of the game with ease, in particular the final boss fight.

Graphically, this game, even so late in the Playstation 2's life cycle, still amazes me. Things are crisp and nice to look at. The characters themselves are detailed, especially Volt with his many piercings and such. Also, you might notice that Sion has a fascinating resemblance to two recent Final Fantasy-affiliated characters, Soma (from Kingdom Hearts) and Tidus (from Final Fantasy X). My personal favorite of the characters was Kou, who was completely tatooed from head to foot. I really enjoyed the graphics in this game as a whole, especially considering that I expected to be unimpressed by them due to newer PS2 games such as Lament of Innocence and Onimusha 2, to name a few. The music and sound effects for this game are also on par and, in some cases, excel quite a bit. A major plus.

The biggest point that I think needs making is such : If you liked the beat-em-up's of old (Streets of Rage, Final Fight), and you like RPG's, then you will LOVE this game...but even after you unlock EVERYTHING, this game will still not have taken you anymore than 6 or 7 hours to beat. On top of that, once you've played the game through once with each of the characters, you will most likely begin to start skipping the plot sequences, therefore taking off even more replay time. This is a real shame, as this game could have gathered a real following if it had some more replay time. Regardless,BRING ON THE SEQUEL!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/12/04