Why did they even bother? That’s exactly what I thought when I saw that Hudson Soft made another Bloody Roar game for the Playstation, but when I popped the game in my system, something changed. A new thought popped into my head. Why did I even bother?
For those of you who don’t know, Bloody Roar is a fighting game a la Tekken or Soul Calibur, but with a twist. Your human character can change into various creatures; a lion, tiger, bunny rabbit, wolf, mole and so on. As an animal, you can tear the living shit out of your opponent, who can also transform for the ultimate battle.
Bloody Roar 1 was the very first game I ever played on my Playstation; it was a lot of fun, mindless fun, and innovative for its time. Even Bloody Roar 2 had good things going for it. Bloody Roar 3 for the PS2 was good for the graphics, but nothing was really different or improved from the first two games.
The game play itself is rather simplistic. I chose the lion, Gado, as I always do and whipped through the arcade mode in less than 30 minutes, my first time trying. I increased the difficulty rating and again, the game was beaten in a little over 30 minutes. There was really nothing left for me to do. I tried the new career mode, which has you fighting one guy after the next and building up your DNA points, but that was even easier, making my character even stronger, leading to simplistic matches, ending in rapid speed, making the game even more disappointing.
Bloody Roar 4, more than Bloody Roar 3, has pristine graphics. The creatures really come to life and look sharp. The backgrounds are nice to look at, and the characters move fluidly as well. Adding blood was also a nice change of pace, but changes like the two life bars, one for the human side, the other for the frosted creature side of you, allows a person to switch back and forth between characters, only prolonging the agony of the repetitive game play. This game just rewards people for mindlessly mashing buttons and pulling combos out of your ass. There is no strategy here and after awhile, punch, punch, kick, throw, slice becomes boring and redundant. Also the blood actually led to a mature rating eliminating even more of the potential audience that would have bought the game. Dumb move.
However, I should be happy I beat the game, right? No. I had to endure some horrible cinematic scene with laughable dialogue that left me scratching my head and making me fear the thought of another possible sequel! Sad to say, but the roar has gone only to be replaced by a silent whimper. Unless something drastic is done, the creatures in this game may just go extinct.
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