The Bouncer

What happens when Squaresoft, the RPG giant, gets "bored"? They make a fighting game. Few remember the PS1 fighter horror "Energhiz", which was a basic attempt by Squaresoft to capitalize off FF7 by featuring characters in it. Then, yet again, Squaresoft is left to tinkering around trying to get under the opressive stereotype of being "That RPG Company".



The Bouncer isnt bad. When I pick up this game, I know good and well that Squaresoft put a decent amount of work into making this different from any other game they've ever made. Its very obvious that this game needs more work, but then again, you have to remember- to my knowledge, this is their first PS2 game ever.

The game itself plays like an isometric fighter. I know its been done before, but I think this might be an innovative idea in and of itself. Instead of sticking you in the traditional fighter style, it lets you move around, which always open up the "Run like a pussy" option.

The game is pretty linear, which means that no matter how well you play the game, you're going to kick a lot of ass very easily. Its all the same, there isnt much deviation, so naturally you'll find yourself practically owning this game's ass in an hour. Easily put: its a short game. Like I said before, there's a lot of work in it, but then again, Squaresoft didnt put their typical story magic into it. Someone gets kidnapped or whatever, go fight some things, etc etc. I'm not nominating it for the story of the year, or even something that kept my interest. The fights were more interesting, I suppose.



This is pretty impressive for a first or second year PS2 game. Its one of the only games I know that actually REQUIRES the Dualshock 2 controllers for multiplayer so it can gauge how hard you hit a button. The Graphics are the crisp PS2 style everyone's familiar with, which means it looks good, but jags still are essentially there in full force. However, I don't think this bothered me that much. The style of the game itself is something ELSE to be debated (A lot of it felt kinda like it was advertising a fake hip hop clothing brand), but I'm not too picky.

Now for the Multiplayer. I would have loved to see the single player splitscreen, being as all three characters are always in any given fight (except for one or two fights which are cop-outs anyway), but there's none to be found. The Multiplayer aspect is just a deathmatch or team deathmatch, with the simple old controls and style. However, for the most part, the maps are small and similar to those seen in the single player. I'm not arguing too much, as the maps certainly work quite well.


Overall, I give this game three stars. If this game came out now by Squaresoft, I probably wouldnt even buy it or play it- this is old technology and style. However, if you keep in mind that this could be considered an experiment by Squaresoft, this is pretty decent. I wouldnt explicitly recommend going on a bargain-hunt for this game, but if it sounds interesting to you, go for it- its interesting, but not amazing.

3 star(s) out of 5

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