Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World

Release Date: November 4, 2008

Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World Review

An instant "must avoid."

You won't find a bigger Dragon Ball Z fan in the IGN office than Shivam Bhatt, our media assistant. The guy's got full sets of toys and DVDs, he wrote college papers about the series, he's learned to sing the theme songs, and he's watched the entire anime in five different languages -- even teaching himself Japanese through the show.

Now that you know that, know this: even Shivam thinks Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World sucks.

"This game has the worst Dragon Ball fighting mechanics I have ever seen," he said after fooling with the controller for a few minutes and before handing the device back to me with a look of disgust. "It's also a really terrible game."

Think we're being too hard on this game? Look at these movies.

Yes, this version of Dragon Ball Z is no good. Meant to be a mix of elements found in the Budokai and Shin-Budokai games, Infinite World claims to be "the best of the Budokai series" on the back of its box, but I doubt that seeing as how at least some of those games were universally heralded as "fun" and Infinite World isn't. You'll take your controller's buttons through the punches, kicks, Ki Blasts, and Ki Burns you'd expect and toss them into three different gameplay modes. Dragon Mission serves as the game's story mode and takes you through some of the franchise's key moments, Dragon Duel is the versus mode where you can challenge Player 2 or the computer, and the unlockable Fighter's Road presents you with more than 100 combatants to unlock and take down across four maps. On top of that are the Dragon Ball staples such as training and the ability to purchase skills via the Zeni you've acquired in successful fights.

That's pretty much where the good news ends. It's not that fighting is broken in this fighter; it's just that it's really boring. You'll tap buttons like mad, and end up just firing off fireballs. Gone are the beam struggles fans came to know and love, and the arenas to fight in are largely rehashes of what players have seen before. Basically, you're locked in a battle of slow-moving punches and lazy animations. You can still edit your skills to modify your character and you can still transform, but none of this makes up for the fact that button mashing just isn't that fun.

Luckily, or perhaps sadly, fighting isn't a large portion of Dragon Mission. This story mode has cutscenes that set up the turning points of the series -- Raditz showing up to kidnap Goku's son, for example -- but then tosses you into a fight or something that's completely nonsensical. After Gohan is kidnapped, Goku needs to run around the blocky, jaggy outdoor level grabbing checkpoint hexagons. If he gets them all before time runs out, Goku goes back to the map screen and can go re-watch the cutscenes or go to the newly unlocked Raditz fight. Nonsensical, non-fighting levels such as this abound in Infinite World. After defeating Raditz, Goku got to run along a snake in the sky collecting the hexagon checkpoints -- that's all that level was; running along a set path jumping up and grabbing stuff. When that was done, Goku ran around a level trying to grab a banana-hurling monkey named Bubbles, which I know happened in the anime, but is still lame in the game.

These events aren't fun, and they certainly don't make me feel like I'm playing the anime. Did I miss the episode when floating hexagons descended on the world?

You'll go to other story levels to be trained, and you'll have to complete a certain number of moves. That sounds OK, but the game never tells you how to do these required moves. When Goku's deployed to learn how to block, three fractions are put at the bottom of the screen to represent how many times you have to do each type of block in the allotted amount of time. Oddly, the game never tells you how to do these blocks or which fraction is counting which type of block. You just have to leap around and try to figure out what the hell the game wants.

The map is as lame as it looks.

Outside of Dragon Mission, Infinite World is strictly fighting, but as I've already said, it's not that fun. With some of the cooler parts of the other games removed, this one feels flat -- and the fact that you're playing in levels that fans have already seen from the other games and that none of this looks impressive thanks to pop-in and jaggies on the PlayStation 2's aging hardware doesn't help.

The Verdict

If you desperately want a silver lining to this disaster, there really isn't one. Sure, the game's only $30, features English as well as Japanese voiceovers, and packs more than 40 characters, but none of this should make you feel like you need to buy this game. The sound's repetitive, the graphics are shoddy, and the gameplay isn't fun.

Do not play Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World.

IGN Ratings for Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World (PS2)
As soon as the opening montage is done, you're dumped into a series of ugly, blocky menus that boil everything down to primary colors and goofy cartoons. There's also one Goku load screen.
It's colorful, and the characters can look alright, but the environments lack detail and everything's very plain.
The wide array of voices is nice, but the music is repetitive and so are the sound effects.
The fighting has been watered down, but the stupid missions that just have me collecting hexagons are what really get me.
Lasting Appeal
There are a lot of fights to get into, but why would you want to?
(out of 10, not an average)
blog comments powered by Disqus
Become a fan of IGN

Game Details

Published by: Atari
Developed by: Bandai Namco Games
Genre: Fighting
Release Date:
United States: November 4, 2008
Japan: December 4, 2008
Australia: December 18, 2008
MSRP: 29.99 USD
T for Teen : Cartoon Violence, Tobacco Reference
Also Available On:
Also known as: DBZ: Infinite World