Hello all interweb dwellers.
Welcome to my first official article!
So today I'm going to look at the game Bloody Roar: Primal Fury.
This is a fairly well made fighting game on GameCube but yet it does have some flaws sadly.
So to start off I will give a slight background to the game. Bloody Roar is a 3D fighting game franchise that started in arcades under the name of Beastorizor, then was ported to the PS1 under the title Bloody Roar. The game franchise stopped at the forth instalment. The game was developed by two companies: Eighting and Hudson.
Bloody Roar: Primal Fury story takes place in between the third and forth game.
SO now to be critical muahahahaha.
I'm going to talk about three aspects. The story, mechanics, and the design.
I will start with mechanics then go to story and finally the best part the design.
Mechanics:
I shall list a few mechanics and then go into detail.
Breakable Walls
Supper Attacks
Transformation (Beast Mode)
Hyper mode
With this game being a somewhat traditional fighting game there is not much that differs from other games, that is why I am talking about mechanics first. I want to tell you what the Bloody Roar franchise does well and one thing it does that other games DO NOT DO, sadly.
The breakable walls are nothing new, a lot of games have had breakable walls, for example the Virtua Fighter series.
This game really doesn't change much about breakable walls, as you smash or knock your opponent into the wall they will start to get damaged to a point where it will break leaving an opening for you to knock an opponent out for a ring out win lose by getting ringed out. This is one thing I will bring up later on in the design section so remember there is a good thing with generic breakable walls.
Next up is good old SUPER ATTACKS woooo!!
In this game each character has two different types of super attacks, also the nice part of the super attacks is they are all executed the same for each character. The input is two quarter rotation starting from bottom going to the left or the same but to the right then the "X" button. This is nice because it puts all characters on the same level for the ease of executing the supers, which makes it more balanced and fair for players of all skill levels. It stops some characters from being better than others due to the difficulty to pull off the super attacks. The other nice part about super attacks is they can only be used during beast mode or hyper mode.
And now the mechanic that makes Bloody Roar, Bloody Roar.
THE BEAST MODE IS BEAST
Where Bloody Roar Shines is the beast mode, this mechanics lets each character transform into their animal form. To do so you need to deal damage or take damage to fill your beast gauge till it turns yellow, if you continue to fill it up all the way then your beast form will last longer. The beast form actually does not have a set time limit but if you take enough damage you can get knocked out of beast mode and sent back to human mode. These all differ with each character, Yugo transforms into a Wolf, Stun into an insect, Alice into a rabbit, Xion is the unborn, and so forth. To transform you have to press "X". If an opponent is close when you transform you can send them flying across the arena, or even out of the ring. This could even deal enough damage to knock out an enemy. Aside from this eruption there is also some other cool aspects. While in beast form you slowly gain life, like other fighting games your health bar will drop but there will be a bit that is higher to show what you can regenerate that portion. Now if you perform a super attack you will lose your beast mode but fully regenerate up to the second bar, this is something that could win you the match. If the super attack lands you will deal massive damage. While in beast mode most characters will get boosts to attack, defence, or speed or other attributes. For example in the insect form stun has he gets the hover ability, Xion gets a range boost for some attacks. Alice gets higher jumps and more speed. The "X" button now loses its transform ability but now becomes another attack button, giving you new combos and the beast attacks. Also it should be noted you can do sprinting attacks. If you transform while running you perform the running attack of the beast form which deals more damage and leave you in the upper hand with an active beast mode, thus this ability is very versatile and helpful.
Now HYPER MODE WOOOOOO!!!
So hyper mode is like beast mode on crack!
This mode can be activated by hitting the "Z" button. The difference in Hyper mode compared to the beast mode is that this actually has a time limit due to how powerful the mode is, you can perform unlimited super attacks without being set back to human mode. also if your beast gauge is not full when entering hyper mode you will lose health proportioned to how far from full the beast gauge is. Now what makes it even more powerful aside from the infinite super attacks, it gives you the ability to stop and start new combos on the whim, (Although I'm not very good at fighting games so I can't say too much for this one aspect.) BUT this is something that is powerful for button mashers and professionals that know how to work the combos. Characters can't be staggered as much now with an add to speed and damage, this makes it a very powerful mode where you basically maul the opponent and finish with a super attack. Some characters have another form in hyper form. Chronos in beast form is practically a penguin but in hyper mode is a phoenix, Uranus is a chimera in beast form but goes to back to human form that is faster and stronger than the beast form, while having a aura around her, and stance of the beast mode (she is banned in tournaments), the chameleon becomes invisible in hyper mode. SO as you can see this mode can be incredibly powerful for faster health regeneration, less stagger, more attack or power or both.
So now for strategy in this I will touch incredibly briefly here for it will be a big focus in the design part. The hyper mode will not stay between rounds but beast mode will. If you finish a round in hyper mode you will start as a human in the next round, finish the round in beast mode and you will start in beast mode next round. SO here is the strategy, do you sacrifice this round so you start with a full beast gauge and the opponent will be human next round or do you say screw it and try to win this round by going beast mode. This plays a very big role on how you can let a match go out.
Story:
So the story is nothing special because it is basically not even there, The story is done just like most fighting games; there is no story mode but an intro to arcade mode and a small cinematic at the end of each characters arcade mode spanning from 30 seconds to maybe a minute and a half. There is also no voiceover or any real background about the characters or the lore. This is quite sad because this franchise actually has a story and they show there is a story and a lot of connections between the characters in the end cinematics of the arcade mode, sadly unless you know the story from the other games in the franchise you are left in the dark, leaving the internet to be your friend. This a GameCube only title and the ONLY title of the franchise on GameCube, leaving some customers in a spot of never being able to play the other games or even this one.
What they should have done was have a cinematic or have something in the manual (I would say a cinematic or even a voice over) to explain the world of Bloody Roar to give new players and old a recap of what the fighting is about. This would increase every player's experience with the game. The cinematic should also be able to played out side of arcade mode and have it in the movie theatre section, also the ended cinematic could have been a bit longer to give a bit more context.
Design:
This game has some good parts for design but also some that are not so good.
I would say the character roster is pretty nice. There is a total of 16 characters. All are fairly different. Some characters focused on speed, some focused on grappling, some are slow yet strong and some are combo centric. Every character even has a cool animal transformation except for two. Long and Shen-Long although these two characters are supposed to be counterparts of each other personality wise, but game play they are fairly similar. These two characters do come from earlier games in the franchise. Although these characters are all unique and different it is apparent some are better than others. This does seem to be a slight issue. Now when you play against the computer this can be a problem in later stages of team arcade but playing with friends wont be so bad.
Next I want to talk about the difficulty. Let me ask you this; have you heard of games cheating to try to be more difficult or to fake difficulty? Well I'm by far no professional fighting game player and I wouldn't say I am good, maybe average. But I can't get past the fact that in later levels of some modes that the computer actually feels like it’s cheating by having characters attacks give them this sort of "green shield" stopping them from being staggered. This becomes a major issue when they do an attack that calls for a set up or anticipation and you land a few blows yet nothing but you end up get smashed with whatever attack. Now I know there are a few moves that do have this effect to it. But not as much as what the computer was doing. I would perform the same move and it would be like a normal attack. What they should have done was to actually take their time and make a cohesive AI that can play better against a human player. They should have had them use combos better and not spam certain combos or moves, The AI is fairly good up until it gets to this point and the game can be a challenge. Once the AI has to cheat it really does zap the fun.
If you play through the arcade mode and complete it with any character you will unlock CHEATS under the cheat menu. This is a good way to add replay value to it. There is around 15 cheats you can unlock. For example big head, no walls, brittle walls, game speed, and even have a permanent beast or hyper mode for your matches. These really do add some fun and customization to the game. I feel like this was a really nice design decision to add in a cheat menu with all of these cheats for it adds more to the experience.
The game has various modes such as Arcade, Team Battle, Versus, Versus Team battle, training and a couple more. I like the addition of the Team Battle and Vs team battle. Team battle handles like arcade mode but you pick 3 characters and if one dies then that is the round and you move to the next character, Vs team battle is the same but it's for a player vs player experience. The addition of these are nice and the load time between characters is very quick, like a normal match. Unlike Tekken 6 on the PS3 which had very long load times between rounds to switch characters, this is especially sad since Tekken 6 is on PS3 and yet Bloody Roar Primal Fury was faster on GameCube.
Some of the arenas had extending areas like in Dead Or Alive but there aren't many and they aren't all that impressive, still a nice addition. What would have made it better if these areas had weaker walls to make them more accessible, seeing as you had to break walls to get to them and you usually beat the opponent before that happened. Also more maps could have used these to add more to the game play and even to strategy, maybe even add something to the lore through level design. Do I want to risk being ringed out here or get them into a potential area with no ring outs and deal some massive damage. Also I would have made these more appealing with better fall animations in these transitions, also not have it be almost a camera cut transition.
Another nice feature with ring outs are, if you hit someone hard enough or ringed them out by entering beast mode it would send them flying almost what seemed like 100 feet. This was really nice giving you a sense of power and making the win look even cooler.
Ok so the last part the transformations!
The Transformations are what set Bloody Roar apart from all other fighting games. The transformation make the characters feel different in two forms, their human and their animal. So much so that in animal form it gives you the ability to use new attacks, regain health, ability to use super attacks, and for some change their normal attacks by giving them more range or even the height of jump attacks, also changing grapples animation and deal more damage. The life regain adds a level of strategy as to when you want to use the transformation and why, do you activate it now to deal more damage or do you wait to get hyper mode or wait so you can use it to regain life. When in beast mode the transformation will cross over all round but hyper mode won't and the beast gauge will drain, once at zero you revert back to human. So do I lose the the opponents hyper mode in round two and start round three with a full beast gauge to start with a grapple attack into a transformation and potentially change the scales to your favour, or do I activate it now and try to survive and beat him/her. You could even trigger it just for the knock back effect and pull off a super move to get the full amount you can regenerate of your health at that moment whether it lands or not. The beast modes are such a pivotal part of the game that it gives a fresh and more thought out fight than most fighting games. This is something that is worth trying and playing with friends. This is by far one of my favourite design choices in a fighting game.
One more thing I would like to add is that there is an unlockable character named Ganesha who is based off of the Hindu God Ganesh. He is a fairly large man but transforms into an Elephant with a lot of power some good speed and is grappled focused with the ability to use his trunk for grapples. I just thought it was cool to add a character based off of a God and have it fit well into a fighting game.
Conclusion:
While this game does fault with AI, some menu blah-ness and lack of story, the gameplay is there especially if your are looking for something to play with friends. The game play is well designed and should definitely be looked into.
Sorry for such a long post but this is one of my favourite fighting game franchises so I had a lot to say. Well thank you all and I shall return with a new post soon.
Have a wonderful day and evening :)