The Bouncer

"Wham Bam Thank You Mam"

This game is like having sex- you do it for awhile, climax, then when it's all over wonder why the hell did you do it in the first place? It's like a one night stand video game. You can beat this game in one hour- that's god awful. It's like Square took a dump on a cd, hid it in a pile of one dollar bills, and then laugh at people when they get crap all over themselves. They could've done a whole lot better than this, and they could've redefined the genre like Tobal No.1 did, but Square foolishly put out dog crap and wondered why this game wasn't as popular as it could be, and they neglected to make a sequel because they thought it wouldn't be popular as well. Companies like Square think they're too important to read gamer reviews and learn what areas of the game need to be improved then go back and make the game even better taking that advice in mind. Game reviews are free ideas. FREE! And companies don't take them seriously. Well, Squaresoft, don't you dare ask why Bouncer wasn't popular because like a child putting his hand in the fire, you should've known better. I can't feel sorry for companies that half ass through the development of a game, and then wonder why it's not popular. The only reason people even paid attention to this game is because of the commercials, and they didn't even advertise for Tobal No.1 and Tobal was a whole lot better than this game.

Gameplay[3]
They used the exact same controls as Tobal No.1 in Bouncer only a little bit more complex. The controls are innovative in that it is the only way to properly define them in a 3-d fighting game and have it defined well. There's probably other ways too but that's going to be the basic idea of how it's going to be done. The controls are not the problem, neither are the levels, and neither is the difficulty. The game is too damn short. As soon as you get into it you've beaten it. Beat it three times to unlock all the moves, and there's not enough extra modes to keep people occupied. There's no Quest mode like in Tobal No.1 which sorely hurts this game. This game needed to have a quest mode and why they put it in Tobal No.1 and not this game I have no idea. It was a bad decision. This game will go down as being the shortest game in video game history. Even Resident Evil is longer than this, and the 3rd one had more replay value than this game. They should've spent more time on this game. This game should've been delayed, and the fact that it wasn't goes to show that the people involved in making it really didn't care enough about this project to begin with. Nine to five workers will get their check at the end of the week regardless if the game sells or not, and they wouldn't want to go through the extra effort of implementing a solid idea, and this is where the problem comes in. Not only does there need to be a socialistic and capitolistic business structure to encourage employee productivity, but passionate gamers need to have the jobs of these businessmen. If programmers knew they were going to get a cut of the profits from a game they made, they would do everything in their power to make it a great game. Please somebody read this because companies need to know that their greed is hurting themselves and gamers when a company like Square churns out mistakes like Bouncer. Bouncer is a mistake people. It is a ''never was'' and ''never will be.'' There is no reason on earth why a game should be that short, and this is to the extreme. No alternate endings, no quest mode, no online play, and when it came out it cost 50 dollars. Now be honest: Who paid full price for this game? Who paid a reservation fee for it? Don't you feel bad that Square did this too you? It would've been more humane if they just shot you. This game more than earned it's one simply because of lack of content. Listen to me: Square made Bouncer... Squaresoft, and now recently SquareEnix. They need help from the gaming community because they're starting to run out of ideas. They haven't even thought to make a sequel to Bouncer. If they put as much work into Bouncer as they do Final Fantasy it would be an excellent game.

Graphics[10]
Nice for Playstation 2. Really pushes the hardware to its limit.

Sound[7]
I had to take off for this. When you first fight the Final boss, they have the first part a Half-Life track being played in a loop and it's annoying. They should've just asked Sierra if they could rip the song off entirely.

Learn from this mistake. You cannot allocate a small budget to a video game project and expect to produce gold. Companies do this, they'll set the budget at so much money and set the release date at so much time. Workers are interested only in beating the deadline, and not on quality, but I still believe that a good game starts in the idea phase. If the idea is good, the programmers can screw up to a point, and it still be a good game. Bouncer was a good idea, but they just didn't go far at all with it. It wasn't given the royal treatment like a Final Fantasy game was given and it really does show. Final Fantasy basically is the same damn thing over and over again, but I won't get into that in this review. If you spent 50 dollars on this game, please don't kill yourself. It's not worth it. Write an angry letter to SquareEnix demanding them to take Bouncer off of store shelves, because it is an insult to the intelligence of gamers everywhere. Tell them shame on them for producing a bad game that's so short because they should've known better.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/04, Updated 03/16/04