"The Bouncer" Review

[Guest chirs3]

After a while, you come to expect certain things from a company. From Capcom, we expect awesome 2D fighters and creepy survival horrors. From HeadGames, we expect pure shite. And from Squaresoft, we expect masterpieces.

 

Maybe that's why I think The Bouncer is, in fact, a steaming pile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or maybe I think that because there's a severe lack of fun in this game.

 

Here's the setup. There's a bar/club named "Fate", where three bouncers work. There's Sion, the "Deep down I'm a softy but I don't show it" character. There's Kou, the only decent good guy. And there's Volt, the ridiculously over the top "I'm ominous and creepy and I know things... dark things..." character. So they're all... working... and a girl named Dominique comes along and gives Sion a present, for his one year anniversary for being a Bouncer. Before he can say "Uh... thanks?", these masked peoples jump in like frogs and snatch her. You find out they were from The Mikado, a corporation who is currently famous for space technology. What do they want with Dominique?

 

Play for about 40 minutes and you'll find out.

 

First, let me say this: Yes, I KNOW this is a fighter, and fighters are not usually well known for their good stories. But this is a STORY DRIVEN fighter, so I have every right to flame Squaresoft for this crap.

 

That said...

 

The writing is god-awful, and the voice acting ain't so great either. And I don't mean like Silent Hill 1, I mean in little annoying ways. Like Sion says "This is... this is unforgivable, Duragon!" Except there's no pause between "unforgivable" and "Duragon", so it sounds like he's introducing "Unforgivable Duragon!" It's like that the entire game.

 

And it's a shame, because the cast of villains play their roles almost perfectly. There's the scantily clad hot chick villain, the villain who's not really a villain, the stark raving lunatic villain, and the hell bent on revenge villain, and they ALL were done well. What's more, the story itself is actually pretty good... It's just presented so badly.

 

OK, OK, Enough story griping. Why is this game no fun?

 

There are four fight buttons. High attack, mid attack, low attack, jump attack. Yes, that's right. Jump attack. Not a jump button in sight.

 

There's a small but noticeable pause between pushing a button and seeing the attack.

 

There's virtually no combo system, other than mashing High Attack a lot for a whopping 3-hitter. You can't do "High high mid low high low high" or anything.

 

Then there are special attacks, which look nice but don't seem to do much more damage than any normal attacks.

 

Then there's the "I'm hitting L1 and Circle, SO WHY ISN'T HE DOING THE SPECIAL ATTACK?!" that happens WAAAAY too often.

 

Whenever you're near an enemy, you instantly move into fighting stance, in which you move like a slug and just face the nearest enemy, no matter which way you move.

 

Then there's the fact that the game IS AN HOUR LONG. You're encouraged to replay it as all three characters. Ok. The game is THREE HOURS LONG.

 

There's versus, which I haven't played because I don't have a second controller or, at the moment, anyone to play with.

 

There's survival mode, which is "Pick a character and kill as much as you can", which is equally frustrating because of the bad fighting system.

 

I suppose I should mention it looks good. Yea. Dominique is hot. Other than that, and some likeable villains, I can't see any reason to play this.

 

chirs3 gives "The Bouncer" three Liquid Panther Thingies out of ten.