The Bouncer - IGN (original) (raw)

Square's hugely anticipated fighter, The Bouncer, received the kind of press that all game companies dream of. The game was touted and perceived as an interactive fighting game that had branching storylines and interactive backgrounds. The hype behind it boasted what Sony had touted early with its promotion of the PS2 -- movie-quality games that would devastate all others before them with stunning visuals, superior gameplay, and with true cinematic presentation. In many ways it was perceived as the first true next-generation fighting game on PlayStation 2.

How much of that hype was the media's interpretation, and how much of it was part of Square's own hype machine is still a hot point of debate.

But The Bouncer is finally out and it will come as a disappointment to many. For the Japanese crowd and those who pay a little extra for imports, the disappointment has already come and gone. For me, as soon as I saw that Square was only showing short movies of The Bouncer at last year's E3, I knew that something was dead wrong. The Bouncer was having some problems then, and Square was being as silent about it as possible.

So once I knew not to expect too much from The Bouncer, I didn't feel as let down as so many of my colleagues. The final version is still a letdown, but not a catastrophic one. In fact, The Bouncer is a decent fighting game that plays a lot like Ehrgeiz and enables players to choose through a story-driven section or to go head to head, via multitap, with three others. It's a good game, not a great one, and it's worth a look.

Gameplay
The Bouncer should feel incredibly familiar to those who have played Erhgeiz and Tobal. The polished-looking characters and smooth animation are second to none in the fighting arena. With a relatively simple set of controls -- Triangle is high punch, Square is middle range, X is low attack, and Circle is jump, coupled with L1 for special moves, and R1 for block -- the game is easy to get a feel for.

Attack response times are relatively good, but for folks familiar with Tekken Tag Tournament and DOA 2: Hardcore, attack response times are slower. They're by no means miserable, but they aren't instant, either. The game sports all kinds of solid fighting moves, from short combos to throws, and can become deadly intense when up against three other humans who've power-up their characters. Some of the moves include high-low trickery, such as high hits followed by low kicks, seven-hit combos, some colorful throws, and team attacks for a nice cinematic effect. Players can use the analog or digital pads and the control set up incorporates the shoulder pads with an intuitive feel. Again, The Bouncer feels a lot like Ehrgeiz, which in my opinion wasn't as good as either of the Tobal games, but it's not rank either. It's just kind of middle of the road.

Regardless of the mode you're in, The game is, at its heart, a multiplayer fighter. Players can fight against a ton characters on screen at once, which much like Oni or Fighting Force (once upon a time) can be a lot of fun. For me it was decent. It wasn't incredible, but it wasn't horrible, either.

The Story Mode, which is technically 1/3 of the game, is what has garnered all of the good and subsequent bad press, and is also a mixed bag of good ideas executed ineffectively. The Story mode tells the tale of three flamboyantly adorned friends, contentedly employed as bouncers at a neighborhood bar. Scion, Kou and Volt, the three heroes, initially appear as rather slack, low-key guys. Up until Scion's girlfriend, Dominique, is kidnapped by a deadly group of armor-clad hooligans, who drop ominously from the sky and can jump and fight like characters from the movie "Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Their strange dress and aggressive behavior warrant investigation, plus they did kidnap Scion's girl.

So the three bouncers head out after the thieves in search of action and one cute girl. They experience resistance and encounter the Mikado Station, and all of the weird back story, strange morphing characters, and deadly plans that could change the face of the planet. And players will learn more about Dominique's strange existence, and what she ultimately means to Scion. We thus begin the short journey into each of their lives, and learn just how deadly, interesting, and able these characters truly are.

The unique Story Mode is an interesting if not tedious way to tell a story. Players watch a cut-scene, fight, save, watch another cut-scene, fight, save, and repeat this until the game is over. What's clever about this set-up is that players have the chance to switch between any of the three players before any fight. So, you can play though the game in many different ways. Additionally, once you play through the game the first time, you only receive information from one of the character's perspectives, so you're encouraged to play again and again. Also, in the Mikado section of the game, each player experiences a different set of obstacles. For instance, Scion encounters a huge set of maze-like rooms and fights in them. On the other hand, Kou dresses up as a Mikado soldier and must learn a set of weird signals to get through undetected. Kou's encounter is hilarious and one of a kind.

The idea behind this whole elaborate story structure is to play through it at least three times, once for each player, to get their background story, to build up their abilities, and to fill in the whole story. Is this a good thing? It's a cool idea, one that hasn't been done before, but it's flawed to the point that it grows excruciatingly tedious. Here's a good example of what I mean -- Once you play through the game the first time, you know about 95% of what will happen the second and third time you play through. You don't know the particular story of each character, but you know the general story. Therefore, you'll want to skip much of it the second and third times through. But doing so means going through a series of load screens, skipping tons of cut-scenes, and just trying to get to the fights themselves, which inevitably become more interesting than the somewhat bland story.

Another point that should be clarified is The Bouncer's length. The Story mode is short, but it's a fighting game, not an RPG. Even more to the point, it's not a Square RPG, which has somehow become the sounding board for the length of any game, RPG or not. Most games won't take 40 hours to play, and this one certainly won't. But action and fighting games don't need to be 40 hours. Though you can beat the Story mode the first time through in about one and one half hours, you are meant to play through another at least two times. All in all, the Story mode won't take more than five hours to complete three times.

There's no doubt it's short. But you know what? I beat Tekken Tag Tournament in less time than that. I've beaten dozens of games in less time that that. The point is that The Bouncer's Story mode is only one part of the game, not the whole thing. The Multiplayer mode is actually more fun to play through than the Story mode, especially with powered-up characters. Additionally, you open up all sorts of secret characters by playing through it multiple times; these secret characters are useful and fun to play in the multiplayer mode, too. So, when you "count the hours" you play The Bouncer, count The Story mode as just one part of it, not the whole thing.

The one- to four-player Versus mode and Survival are both good fun, too. And while Versus has its own problems, it's fun just the same. In it, characters are much smaller and less detailed than in the Story mode, and because of the camera angles, it's often difficult to tell where you're hitting, but the thrill of kicking some serious human competition with all powered-up characters is an unparalleled experience. Survival mode is pretty fun, too, though it's a familiar experience. You have to essentially survive an onslaught of characters, one after another, until you've beaten them all.

Lastly, I must address the game's camera angles. For the most part, the various isometric camera perspectives aren't a problem. For about three-fourths of the game, they really didn't bother me. The camera does, however, become a major problem later in the game, when players are condemned into small, close quarters, and they fight much more powerful bosses. In particular, the camera is infuriatingly horrible in the fight against the final boss. I don't know how many times I died because I couldn't see him kicking my ass from outside the screen. In this section, and in many others, the gamer is punished mercilessly because of game design, and it's not only annoying, it's something you wouldn't have expected from Square or DreamFactory. But there is it.

Graphics
When it comes to graphics, the Bouncer is the best looking game on the PlayStation 2 to date, no doubt about it. The environments are flush with polished polygonal objects and characters, and the classic Square character design is fully realized in 3D with strange and familiar characters. Some of the recurring bosses Mugetsu and Echinda, and good guys Scion and Volt exemplify this fantastical design perfectly. The world of the Bouncer is also totally fantastical, set in the future, and is a strange combination of utopian ideas and gritty urban street scenes. The game's vehicle and building design are reminiscent of Final Fantasy games, but at a far larger in scale, boasting more realism and more 3D detail than any Square fighting games before.

The characters are elaborate unto themselves, too. Kou is wildly tattooed, and looks more like a New Zealand native than an urban bouncer. The two horns atop Volt's head, which make him look devilish, are part of the story that later unfolds, but they cast him as a nebulous devil of sorts who's fighting for the good guys, for once. And Scion, the story's central hero, is classic Square. He's in love, he's angry and sorrowful, and ready to kick some serious butt -- and for a guy his size (pint, that is), it's surprising to see how much he can actually kick. His ensemble, with the shorts, the spiky hair, and the giant cross hanging from a dog collar, is certainly unique. In some ways he looks more like a chick. It should be noted that the characters' hair and clothing move with tremendous realism and abide by what appears in real physics. The characters' baggy clothes bounce, sag, and sway back and forth. Those with longer hair show off quite a bit of "hair physics" as well, and the look and overall feel are cohesive throughout.

Another intriguing aspect of The Bouncer is its glowing graphics. DreamFactory employs a Playboy-like glossy filter that smoothes out every single bit on the screen. The effect is consistent throughout the game, and rids the PS2 of aliasing or flickering, but also provides a unique gloss that's never been used before with such success. But the in-game cut-scenes are what really struck me. They did because of two things, they are detailed, lush and smooth looking, but the difference between the in-game cutscenes and the CG cutscenes are barely distinguishable. Square and DreamFactory also did a fantastic job with the CG, which is drop-dead gorgeous. Sure, us graphic tarts can see the minute differences, but Square has definitely upped the level of visuals on a console like never before, and I love it.

Sound
The Bouncer is filled with guitar-thick rock and later on in the game ranges into Eastern-influenced songs. Thankfully, the music's quite good. The songs are geared toward action sequences and are well constructed, and they can be listened to several times without growing miserable to listen to.

As for the sound effects, the standard set of "ooohffs" and "owwws" play a major part of the fighting. You'll notice lots of swishing jumps and exaggerated attack sounds, too. It's silly, when compared to what a real kick or hit sounds, like, but the little extra sounds add a little style and anti-realistic feel that I like.

As for the dialog, I can't say much good about it. The voice-overs are quite good, but the dialog itself is pretty standard stuff. Much of it, especially Scion's, is entirely predictable, silly, and typical of a young, angry man who's in love. He says all of the things you would expect him to say. It's bearable, but couldn't he have said just one thing slightly less obvious? Kou's dialog is usually loose, goofy stuff, with an undertone of knowing more than he lets on. He plays the jester in the game, and his weird talk ("You would be such a babe if you weren't trying to kick our butts") is just plain lame. Volt's dialog retains a tone of a wise and knowing leader than the others. He's the serious guy, and his "big-dude" disposition works nicely into the trio. As for Dominique, she's a power-puff girl without the power. She's adorable but vacant, and she screams a lot. She's hard to ignore, with that slim figure and puppy-love eyes, but if she didn't talk at all, I'd like he more.

The Bouncer also is the first PlayStation 2 game to be released with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, so for those of you who are total audio-freaks, and who own high-end stereos, you'll really enjoy the game's high qualiity sound.

Verdict

What frustrated me the most about The Bouncer is that there is so little interaction with the environments, and that there are no true story branch points. The game lends itself to these very things, buy then never delivers more than blunt cut-scenes and fighting, and nothing much more in the Story mode. The Bouncer is not the next messiah, it's not the next wave of fighting, and frankly, it's not the paradigm for anything really new, except perhaps incredible-looking graphics.

These things said, The Bouncer is a decent game. It's not horrible, it's not brilliant. It's pretty average, and it's as simple as that. I had fun playing it and I feel that it's definitely worth renting and even buying if you're a died-in-the-wool Square fan.