Don't Tell Me I Lost When You Just Told Me I Won

I've mentioned a few times I'm a fan of the DragonBall series. Watched a lot of the episodes, bought some of the manga, and yeah, bought some of the video games.

The first Budokai game wasn't very good, but I played it enough (and had enough fun with it) that it was worth the money. Budokai 3 was actually a pretty good game. Maybe not one of the greatest fighting games of all time, but I tend to stink at fighting games anyway, so how would I know*? There was one other I got to play once, Supersonic Warriors on the Game Boy Advance. It wasn't much different from the first two games I mentioned, other than the fighting arena being limited to 2-D rather than 3-D. Fly around, trade punches and energy blasts, save the world, that sort of thing.

The one thing it really had going for it was the ability to play story modes for several different characters. Budokai 3 had that, but in some cases, it seemed sort of half-assed. What I mean is, I'd be playing as a character (say Krillin), and I'd have to fight somebody that guy fought in the actual original story. Originally, Krillin lost, but I have to win, because this game actually expects you to win boss fights, unlike Baten Kaitos: Origins**. So I do, hooray for me. The game then continues forward with the story as it was originally, so it's treated as though after I kicked butt, I was trounced by the same guy off-screen. That's deflating.

With Supersonic Warriors, if you win a fight, the story actually proceeds like you won the damn fight. It actually reflects the fact that with the help of your quick wits and reflexes, this character can defend the world from any threat. Or destroy the world in defiance of all opposition if you play as one of the bad guys. Whichever. It was a relatively little touch that I appreciated, because if the game is going to let fight the big battles with a different character as the big hero, then it could at least play out like the character I chose is the big hero.

* I think I was pretty good at the first Super Smash Bros., but I never moved beyond mediocre on any other fighting game.

** You'd think not being expected to win would be a good thing, but not when you're expected to survive for a certain amount of time. You can't be trounced too quickly, but you also can not win. At least not until some point well after the place where I got fed up with battles I wasn't able to win.