Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World

November 12,2008 - In what seems like the final farewell DBZ game to the PS2, Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World shakes off the Budokai Tenkaichi gameplay and returns to the traditional fighting gameplay that many enjoyed with the original Budokai games. Dimps is back in the driver’s seat for this game as they focused on making a great last hurrah for the DBZ fans with just a PS2. Is Infinite World a good way to cap off the series’ stay on the PS2?

Infinite World’s story mode, called Dragon Mission, covers the entire Dragon Ball Z story along with Dragon Ball GT. Instead of just a series of fights in the order that they appear on the show, the individual events that are included offer other activities such as Goku running down Snake Way and training with King Kai by capturing Gregory the monkey. Other extraneous events are included outside of what happens in the story, such as training missions or other events, like Goku running through rings, that aren’t shown in the anime. It’s a serviceable way to experience the storyline once more, especially if you’re not up for watching the hundreds of episodes that this game covers.

The other modes included with Infinite World really don’t offer anything that the first three Budokai games didn’t offer four years ago, damaging the appeal of buying yet another DBZ game for an aging platform. You’ve got your standard versus multiplayer mode, training mode, and an unlockable mode called Fighter’s Road that lets you use your custom-skilled characters against the computer’s custom-skilled characters in a series of fights to earn more money and capsules. The Warrior’s Room is the store mode that offers you a chance to sell off your hard-earned money on capsules to make the best version of Goku, Buu, or whoever else you want to fight with. As for how many characters you can earn and unlock, you won’t find the ton of fighters that the Budokai Tenkaichi games always boasted, but you will get all of the big fighters in the series along with some special ones from the many movies for just over 40 total fighters.

If you’ve played a good amount of any of the first three Budokai games, Infinite World’s gameplay should be instantly familiar since not much has really changed since then. The control scheme’s the same along with a lot of the same moves for most characters that are just named differently, so there aren’t too many unique moves for each fighter. That kind of just makes the fighters feel a bit generic and the somewhat clunky fighting mechanics that were fine four years ago have become a bit dated by now to really attract anyone besides the hardcore DBZ fans.

For a PlayStation 2 game, Infinite World looks fine for the most part. It’s not going to be the best looking PS2 game you’ve even seen, but it captures the DBZ style and looks okay. The load times are decent and are hidden by the typical DBZ mini-game featuring Goku climbing Korin’s Tower from the original Dragon Ball. A lot of the stages and in-game models look and feel like they’re just rehashed from the other Budokai games, so it starts to feel like the game was just a bit of a cash-in on the license for the holiday season. Fans of the original Japanese dub will enjoy that they have the option to listen to the original voices or stick with the English dub from Funimation. The music is your standard DBZ-style of music, so you want to take it or leave it.

If you still haven’t gotten enough of the Dragon Ball Z and GT story, Dimps and Atari have you covered with Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World. It may not come off as anything more than a holiday cash grab to take advantage of the huge audience that still buys PS2 games, but Infinite World may be the game that fans of the original Budokai trilogy can get behind. Unless you’re a DBZ fan with $30 burning a hole in your pocket for some DBZ action and you only have a PS2, there’s not much reason here to save some money and just rent the game. Fighting fans with next-gen systems already have their DBZ game along with plenty of other fighters out and coming soon enough that looking back for this game should not be something that you’re considering.

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