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  • Bellasana's picture
    Bellasana

    Dragon Ball Z 1.0 is a fan-created game that has a player zipping through the skies as Songo on his cloud. The story goes that the menacing Pilaf has prepared an army, once again, to destroy Earth. But even if you have no idea who Songo or Pilaf are, or what Dragon Ball Z is altogether, you’ll be just as bored as you would if you did.

    I know that console Dragon Ball games have never really wowed the hardcore, or really even casual, gaming audiences before. But I still think that the button-mashing fighting platforms like the “Budokai” series have some merit. They’re flashy, at least, with some interesting voice work. They also hold significance in the Dragon Ball storyline—the long, long…long long long Dragon Ball storyline and those that have branched off from it.

    I expected more from Dragon Ball Z 1.0, especially because it was created by fans of the show, who are, in turn, hopefully fans of the console games. This free game is all about knocking down ships (which oddly enough can’t even hurt you, though their fire can) with a simple move. And the ships just seem to keep coming as you fly across a boring background on your little cloud.

    The game got so repetitive that I figured I had to be missing something. And so I went back to the main menu and clicked the button that read “HLEP”. No, this wasn’t a typo on my part, that’s how the button reads. I was even more disappointed to find that the directions intended to “hlep” you are all in Chinese, from what I know of Kanji characters.

    Not that this game needs much of a tutorial. The game wouldn’t be so dull if it had more of a variety of enemies and different weapons and better backgrounds and a comprehensible help page and…

    …okay, so it would take a lot more for me to give this game a high score. But if you just can’t get enough of Dragon Ball Z and the characters, or secondary characters, within, then give this game a go. Perhaps it just has too narrow of an audience for me to think it too successful of a game. The good news? It’s free.