Thursday, January 14, 2010

Bakugan: Battle Brawler

Developer: NOW Productions
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: Oct. 20, 2009
Systems: Wii (Reviewed), Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E
Official web site

In a nutshell: I still don't exactly know what a Bakugan is supposed to be.

0:00 The back of the box promises that "This is Bakugan like never before." That's highly accurate for me, since I'd never heard of Bakugan before receiving this game in the mail. But I like to keep up with the "youth culture" with its "Internet" and its "sexting" and its "industrials" and so forth, so I figured I'd see what this was all about.

0:01 Two Yu-Gi-Oh rejects stand alongside the game's logo as an awesome guitar riff plays on the preview screen. BWAH-NOW!

0:02 What seems like a billion game company logos fly by, then we see a view of the earth from space. A red-jacketed guy throws what looks like a gem. A circle with six colored gem pie pieces appear briefly. A blue-haired girl rides a robo-lion. The red jacket guy summons four girls, then throws another gem ... oh, no, it looks more like a poké-ball. Out of the ball comes a HUGE RED DRAGON to battle a HUGE BLUE DRAGON. They both shoot energy from their mouths in huge streams that EXPLODE in a HUGE CONFLAGRATION ARGH SO MUCH AWESOME AND TITLE!

0:03 A light electric guitar slow jam plays over the title screen. When I press +, red-jacket guy tells me how his "whole world changed one day when all these random cards rained down everywhere." Really? Cards falling from the sky? Really? Anyway, the kids made up a game to play with the cards, but it turns out the cards opened up a new dimension of monsters or something. "We are the Bakugan Battle Brawlers. Bakugan: One goal, two worlds." What goal would that be? And what two worlds, exactly?

0:05 I guess I'd better go to the Tutorial first. Maybe it'll teach me what a Bakugan is. "Hello, I'm Alice. I'll tell you all about playing Bakugan," She's a cute little redhead in a yellow summer dress. "Let me help you out." You can help me out anytime, Alice... *swoon*

0:06 I have a deck of cards and three Bakugan. My goal is to win three Gate Cards. That's great, but WHAT'S A BAKUGAN?

***-->CONTINUE READING AT CRISPY GAMER<--***

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