TGS 1999: The Bouncer - First Look - IGN (original) (raw)

SquareSoft's first PlayStation 2 game debuts new innovations in apocalyptic environments. 5 movies!

One of the most amazing Tokyo Game Show titles to make its debut last weekend was Squaresoft's unofficial sequel to Ehrgeiz, The Bouncer: Seamless Action Battle System. An experiential game combining a unique four-person fighting system with adventure aspects that weaves in Square's knack for storytelling, The Bouncer demonstrated a new take on gameplay paradigms that which Tekken Tag Tournament and Gran Turismo 2000 didn't.
First of all, the game shines with luminosity that other game's lacked. Sure GT 2000 and TTT are brilliant looking, but they follow already established game formulas. They're going for realism. The Bouncer's design focuses on bizarre, animal-like characters and their abilities to move fluidly from unlike environments. The character design actually highlights a glowing characteristic, too, so they all seem oddly angelic and luminescent. Part of this glow effect is used no doubt to set the mood that this apocalyptic gang-style fighter, in which _Final Fantasy_-look-alike characters and marauding gangs run through streets, subways, and bash through restaurant store fronts clashing in all-out brawls.

Second, the graphics showed off spectacular water, fire, and lighting effects in large, interactive environments with a chilling purpose: to emphasize the chaotic nature of the world in which you're placed. On particular event shows a train bashing through a subway wall, knocking down slabs of concrete, destroying staircases, and puncturing a water valve that splashes into the subway. All this is after the star characters jump and roll off the train through a stream of fire issuing off its side. The demo for The Bouncer was top-notch stuff, needless to say.

But most significantly, Square's "Seamless Action Battle System" means that players will roam from adventure sequence to fighting sequence without intermittent FMVs or cutscenes that look out of place; the adventure aspects blend seamlessly into massive street brawls involving as many ten characters

Unfortunately, the information about The Bouncer's multiplayer aspects were slightly askew. The Bouncer looks to be a single-player fighting adventure game, not a multiplayer game, as previously believed. EA-Square's X-Fire (pronounced "cross fire") is a four-player game, with options for either one to four players to play simultaneously.

The Bouncer was unplayable at Tokyo Game Show, but will be available as a launch title on March 4, 2000 in Japan. Look for more updates on IGNPS2 in the coming months on Square and Dream Factory's superb new fighter.

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