t1z4l

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero aims to capture the wild, acrobatic, over-the-top battles of the anime and its various iterations as characters vanish and reappear behind one another, counter each other’s counter moves, and fire off devastating blasts that leave the area a wasteland. When even the early story battles have that much mayhem in them, you’d better be ready for everything your opponents can throw at you right from the very first battle. Bandai Namco will throw some incredibly thrilling fights at you in this latest Dragon Ball game, but you’d best believe you need to be trained and ready before you start fighting against these ultra powerful characters.

I cannot stress this enough: if you have not played the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi arena fighter games, you need to head over to the Super Training menu and go over everything in Battle Training. I figured since I have a decent handle on fighting games I could give the commands a glance and hop right into playing the game. I was utterly wrong and got stomped immediately. I thought the game would at least let me learn the ropes by lowering the difficulty, but by the time I hit Vegeta in Episode Battle (the story mode), I was getting mauled constantly. I even turned on every possible Battle Assist, getting the game to help with combos, Dragon Dashes to catch up with hurled foes, and help with blocking, and it made next to no difference. You can’t just lower the difficulty and mash buttons, here. You need to learn the systems.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s systems are very satisfying and help you fall in love with game once you commit to learning them. Battle Training will walk you through each of your moves one by one, letting you practice them until you master them. Since there’s a lot to factor into every second of combat, you should take your time, here. For instance, basic movement involves far more than just walking around, as you can leap into the air and fly at will. You can also Dragon Dash to move far faster, allowing you to chase foes you’ve launched away from you or to make a quick getaway if you need to get to some cover to avoid an incoming blast.

This leads us to your Ki, the meter that fuels many of your handy abilities. Dragon Dash costs Ki to use (the yellow bar under your health bar), and while it recharges as you smack your foe around (or if you stand still and hold R2, which charges it fast but practically begs to get you smacked), you can burn through it fast if you Dragon Dash too much. Same if you use Ki Blasts to pepper foes with a few bursts of energy or if you hold the button down to launch a single, devastating one. You’ll also burn through Ki in a hurry if you use your character-specific specials (like Gohan’s Explosive Cannon). While managing a special meter in a fighting game isn’t unique, since it’s connected to movement and being able to use many of your best moves, it feels even more stressful to keep track of it in this game.

So, it’s got more in-depth moves and the special meter is tied into combat a bit deeper. Why would I be worried about getting trashed playing Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero? On top of this, there are in-depth dodge, clash, and counters system in play. If you’re about to get slammed up close, you can Vanish Assault to appear behind your enemy, trying to get the drop on them. You can also just hold Circle and use Perception to counter your opponent’s strikes. You can do a high speed evasion by blocking with perfect timing when you’re about to get hit, slipping away to hit back. Your throws, fast steps, and Ultimate Blasts can enter a clash state against your opponent, resulting in a short quicktime event where you’re suddenly mashing buttons to come out on top. You have lots of tools to quickly turn a bout around, but things can just as easily get turned around on you.

This all results in battles that are extremely chaotic if you don’t have all of these moves, skills, and combat possibilities firmly in your mind. Right from the start, and even at low difficulties, you and your opponent will be vanishing and reappearing around one another, entering sudden clash states where you have to switch what you’re doing, and alternating between chasing and hurtling away from one another. It all happens blazingly fast, too. The game gives you a fair amount of health to make it so the matches don’t end too quickly even while you’re getting the hang of this stuff, but it can still be a lot to learn and get the hang of.

But when you start to get it, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero looks and feels incredible. While I would argue that Dragon Ball FighterZ looks a little bit sharper when it comes to its characters and attacks, it doesn’t capture the feeling of movement and massive destruction that this game does. You will both be flying all over these massive battlefields, shifting from high-speed flight to an intimate beatdown where you’re doing dodges and counters against one another in the space of milliseconds. It captures this incredible spectacle because of all of these systems working in tandem – especially so as your attacks blow up the battlefield itself. If you slowed the game down to look at its visuals they don't look as good as FighterZ, but when everything's moving, it looks great. It’s relentlessly cool to look at these fights, and feels even better that you’re the one in charge of what happens.

Episode Battle is a good place to start practicing these skills; just don’t expect it to go easy on you. This story mode follows the narrative arcs of some of the major characters, capturing several major battles they went through. It manages to hit highlights from the various plotlines quickly and effectively without boring you with long plot dumps between fights, hitting a rare good middle ground for story that I didn’t see in Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash or Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. The game gets to the point while still conveying the story and looking good while doing it, making Episode Battle pleasant to fight through. You can also bounce around several character arcs at will, so if you get stuck on a fight, you can switch characters and do someone else for a bit.

If you want something else that’s not in any previous Dragon Ball Z storyline, Bonus Battles offers some unique fights between characters in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. Maybe it’s just a hard battle where you are especially weak or it has some unique restrictions, but these offer special fights to test your abilities or just try out a battle between characters that would be different from the regular storyline. These add some extra fun for single player, but you can also design your own Bonus Battle for you or other players to work through.

Custom Battles sees you choosing who will fight and where they’ll fight. On top of this, you can set battle conditions for the fight. For these, you set a trigger condition (someone gets defeated, for example, or hits a certain level of health left), and then something will happen (they get transformed, lose access to certain moves, enemies will get harder, etc). You can also set up a story scene before, during, and after the fight, choosing effects, captions, announcer voices – basically creating your own cutscene (with some limitations). You can really do a lot with this – far more than I expected.

You can also post these Custom Battles online for others to play through, too. You can’t just create some miserable beatdown, though, as, like Mario Maker, you need to win the fight to be able to post it online. That said, players who want to set up creative challenges or to dabble with making their own limited Dragon Ball Z stories can do some neat things with this tool. It’s time-consuming, but is an incredibly neat extra for the game to have.

If you find yourself having trouble with some of the fights in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero or are getting frustrated that you’re not progressing, there are Ability Items you can buy in the game’s shop that can improve your character’s powers when equipped. I didn’t find these broke the game – more like they gave you a bit of an edge in a fight. Plus, you can only equip so many on your character. Still, they make a difference and are fairly affordable as the game gives you Zeni constantly for every little thing you do in it. Even if you lose, simply playing as characters and doing things in a fight gives you Zeni, so you’re always getting a little something from playing it.

After being unimpressed with Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash and Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, I was pleasantly surprised with Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. It looks spectacular in motion and really captures the scope of the franchise’s wild fights. With its many counters, fast movements, explosive field effects, and incredible blast moves, it makes you feel like you’re fighting for your life against relentless enemies. It will take some real training to get all of its battle expectations down, but it is absolutely worth it.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will be available on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC on October 11, 2024.

The post Review: Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is Delightfully Frantic appeared first on Siliconera.

Bandai has primed the catapults and launched a new wave of announcements related to its Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Project Ignite program. The global initiative introduced a handful of new Gundam SEED-related projects to the fold, including a new feature film, a new manga spinoff, and a new video game.

The largest and most concrete announcement  served as the very venue to launch Gundam SEED Project Ignite from: A full-scale articulated replica of the ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam. The first full-scale Gundam statue to be built outside of Japan, the "life-size" Freedom Gundam was publicly unveiled on May 28, 2021 in Shanghai, China. The statue itself stands 18 meters (about 60 feet) tall. Like the full-scale Unicorn Gundam statue in Odaiba, Japan, the life-size Freedom Gundam features limited articulation, as well as a periodic light show and presentation to accompany its activation. s on Chinese video sharing site Bilibili captured footage of the event. Youtube channel New China TV also aired a brief special with some clips of the statue under construction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEymsT_UcS8

Unveiling the life-size Freedom Gundam accompanied another part of the Gundam SEED Project Ignited lineup: "GUNDAM docks at Shanghai", a limited-time promotional event centered around the statue's home: Mitsui Shopping Park LaLaport Shanghai. The mall's Gundam Base store will host a temporary art and animation exhibit celebrating all things Gundam (especially SEED) and sell exclusive merchandise.

Third and fourth in the lineup were announcements of a new Gundam SEED feature film and a new game. The film, currently untitled, will serve as a sequel to the TV series, and will be supervised by Mitsuo Fukuda. Fukuda directed both SEED and its sequel series Gundam SEED DESTINY. No details were available about the new game other than being in development.

Bandai had more to say about the final part of the Gundam SEED Project Ignited slate: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Eclipse. Set for a debut in July 2021, SEED Eclipse is a manga series taking place in Cosmic Era 72, between Gundam SEED  and SEED DESTINY. During this "two years of fragile peace", a covert ops unit called the ODR was active.

The series will also debut a new "hero" mobile suit: The MV-X08 Eclipse Gundam. Developed in secret by Orb (the same nation that developed SEED's Strike Gundam), the Eclipse Gundam can transform into a flying mobile armor, and is equipped with "Mirage Colloid" stealth systems. It's also compatible with the Strike Gundam's "Striker Pack" equipment. The Eclipse Gundam will be released as an MG-grade plastic model kit in August 2021. The official page boasts that it's the "fastest development of a Gundam plastic model from 3D design to MG" yet.

Gundam SEED can be viewed on streaming services. A live-action Gundam film is in development in the west, as well. Various SEED mobile suits are also playable in Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs. Maxi Boost ON for the PS4.

The post New Gundam SEED Game and Anime Projects Officially Announced appeared first on Siliconera.

Mobile Suit Gundam is popular worldwide, but in its home of Japan it's practically a cultural institution. And though the original "Universal Century" Gundam setting tends to get most of the attention, spinoffs like 2015's Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans are popular in their own right. That might be why Bandai's honoring the fifth birthday of the series by releasing a new, bespoke clothing and accessory line inspired by the show [Thanks, Famitsu!].

Courtesy of the Bandai Apparel Division (the same folks that brought the Kamen Rider clothing line into being), the Iron-Blooded Orphans 5th Anniversary Collection will be sold through Bandai's Gundam-centric clothing store, STRICT-G and the Bandai online outlet.

The items include Iron-Blooded Orphans-themed T-shirts, hoodies, and other accessories like tote bags and pins. Rather than emblazon the merchandise with pictures of mecha or characters, the designs evoke the show more obliquely, through iconography and quotations. That could be a plus for a customer who prefers to keep their fandom a bit more low key.

For example, though most of the items in the line feature the stylized fleur-de-lis-like logo of Tekkadan, the main group in Iron-Blooded Orphans, one hoodie design inspired by the character McGillis Fareed features nothing more than a candy-colored logo that says "Chocolate Guy."

The design is a reference to McGillis' first in-person meeting with series protagonist Mikazuki Augus. After narrowly avoiding a traffic accident involving Mikazuki's friends, Fareed tries to make it up to the young teens with some candy. Mikazuki, never much for ing names, refers to Fareed as "The Chocolate Guy" for much of the series moving forward.

The Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans 5th Anniversary clothing line is available for preorder via the STRICT-G online store.

The post Raise Your Flag for Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans Apparel appeared first on Siliconera.

Feeling the need for some classic anime this weekend? Consider loading up the GundamInfo Youtube channel, where Bandai has ed the original Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy in its entirety. All three installments are available to watch for free in Japanese with English, Chinese, and Korean subtitle options. No specific timeline for the movies was listed, regarding availability, but in mid-March 2020 the portal hosted Gundam Thunderbolt for about two weeks.

As many likely know, Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the most influential anime series of all time. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino in 1979, Gundam was at the time a pioneer in the field of mecha stories. It conceptualized the popular "super robots" of the time as realistic weapons of war, telling a grim, more humanistic narrative. The original 43 episodes were condensed into three movies released between 1981 and 1982. The trilogy is considered by fans to be the most approachable way to get into the original Gundam storyline, as it discards some of the less essential and distracting material from the TV run.

Set in the "Universal Century" year 0079, Mobile Suit Gundam tells the story of Amuro Ray, pilot of the RX-78-2 Gundam, a powerful prototype "mobile suit" mecha. He and the crew  of the Earth Federation warship White Base, as they make their way amidst a war between the Federation and the space-based Principality of Zeon.

For your convenience, we've embedded the Youtube videos for the Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy below.

Here's Movie I:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYunkmTxzH4

Followed by Movie II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLSKZoW0lfI

And Movie III:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuXE97zmFc

The post Watch the Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy on Youtube Now appeared first on Siliconera.

Bandai Entertainment is celebrating the relaunch of its Gundam.info hub site by making three full-length Mobile Suit Gundam movies freely available. Because there's not a lot of time left until they go away, it'd be best to watch (or archive) them soon. As announced, Bandai is only keeping two of them up through the month of March 2020, with one going away on March 16, 2020.

The movies in question are Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky and its sequel Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower. These are in addition to the latest Gundam movie, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative, which began streaming on March 13, 2020. The Thunderbolt movies will be available until March 31, 2020, while Narrative will only stay until March 16, 2020.

The Gundam Thunderbolt films are a feature-length compilation of the six-episode limited series and based on a manga. The story is set during the One Year War of Gundam's core Universal Century timeline. An Earth Federation squadron made up of refugees from a destroyed space colony called the Moore Brotherhood fights a fierce battle against the Principality of Zeon's Living Dead Division, a group of amputee soldiers fitted with metal and cybernetic prosthetic limbs. They war over the "Thunderbolt Sector" an area of space filled with the debris from destroyed colonies and home to frequent electrical storms.

Here's December Sky:

https://youtu.be/YkR4zK-_cRY

And here's Bandit Flower:

https://youtu.be/q4PI6EMz_0s

Turn on closed captions for subtitles in the English, Chinese, Korean, and French. An English dub option is available through the main GundamInfo Youtube Channel.

The post Three Gundam Movies Are Free Gundam Movies This March appeared first on Siliconera.

Looks like this one slipped under our radar amidst the Comic-Con coverage. Bandai Entertainment, the North American anime distribution subsidiary of Namco Holdings, hosted a at the event, where the company announced their anime licenses.

Instead of licensing brand new series, Bandai are looking into their back catalogue of existing productions in Japan. First up is Tales of the Abyss, which was a 26-episode series produced in 2008. It ran until 2009. The second license is Turn A Gundam, a series from 1999 written in celebration of the franchise's 20th anniversary.

Hopefully, the announcements will make a few fans happy. It's nice to see that Namco Bandai, like Square, are finally exploring the full extent of their catalogue across various media.

Earlier in the year, Bandai Entertainment launched a dedicated manga portal in order to help their manga content stand out better.

The post Tales of the Abyss Anime Coming To North America appeared first on Siliconera.

In order to better facilitate their growing list of manga licenses, Bandai Entertainment have launched a dedicated manga portal, separate from their main website.

"We have some exciting releases this month such as Lucky Star Vol. 4, Gurren Lagann Vol. 4, Gundam 00F Vol. 2, and Code Geass Nunnally Vol. 4, all of which are previewed on the site. Check back frequently for more updates and release information,” Robert Napton, marketing director at Bandai Entertainment entertainment stated in a press release the company recently sent out. Napton is reportedly a great proponent of Bandai's manga line.

Given that publishers like Viz, Dark Horse, Del Rey and Tokyopop have a significant head start on Bandai in the manga sector, it'll be interesting to see how Bandai Entertainment play catch up in the coming years. It strikes one as odd that Bandai Entertainment aren't making better use of their organization's ties to the games community.

The post Bandai Entertainment Launch Manga Portal appeared first on Siliconera.