a change of style for Atari. But somewhat disappointing.

Posted by Antonio on 6th May 2010

So Atari decided to give the dragonball franchise to new developers. From the previous developers of the "Z" series, DIMPS...to the new development company SPIKE.

The results were a radical new approach to fighting games in general and not just to the DBZ series.

Instead of a fighting game where the player views and controls the battles on a traditional 2D type plane format,...meaning seeing both characters from a side view...you see the character you control from a 3rd person shooter type view. In versus mode involving 1p vs 2p,
the tv screen is divided straight down the middle for both players to see their respective character from 3rd person view.

I commend Atari for taking a chance at this new approach to fighting games.

only problem is....the gameplay really was not polished.
What I mean by that is-
Too much attention was placed on the ki projectile attacks, and too little attention on hand to hand combat. There was no point on using hand to hand physical fighting because it was primative and pointless.
Too much button mashing and after countless hits traded between players...no reduction on life meter. Meanwhile, one ki attack would take 1/3rd of a character's life(health) meter.
Which made fighting with punches and kicks even more pointless!

Hand to hand combat needed much improvement. And needed more balance in regards to damage scale in comparision to ki special attacks.

Sparking!Neo and Sparking! Meteor are way, way better.
WAY better!