So, this is a thing now. Apparently, WayForward is working on a new Bakugan game. Admittedly, having grown up with the original TV series and card game, I was a little excited to see Bakugan return. ...Except it's not Bakugan at all.
For those of you who do not know what Bakugan is, you have these little ball creatures that you throw out onto a battlefield and see them transform to do battle with each other. You place down Gate Cards or Trap Cards that can offer various effects, such as boosting the power level of your Bakugan or making it so your opponent can't swap out, among other things. You also have Ability Cards that do various things. You can send out three Bakugan at a time, and a battle occurs when two Bakugan meet on one Gate Card.
Yeah, so scrap all of that exciting stuff and you get this new game. You still send out Bakugan, but only one at a time, and they exchange slaps while you run around the field collecting energy tiles. These tiles power-up your Bakugan and allow you to use one of their abilities, but it looks pretty... boring and slow. The only returning Bakugan I've seen so far is Dragonoid, and he looks terrible, though there is one other returning Bakugan announced that I don't know the name of. The kid running around and trying not to get stepped on by their three-story tall monster is hilarious, though.
The field play of this game also seems sloppy, at least from what was shown so far. The animation framerate is choppy, loading takes a longer time than it should (a good three seconds before the game tells you you got an item after getting it), and it seems mostly like a "do this" scenario where you complete quests to progress. While nothing's really been shown for the story, I don't have high hopes for the base game play.
This may very well be based on the newer series of Bakugan cartoons, which bored me five minutes into the first episode because so many things felt way too out of place. This is apparent with the game's artstyle, and Dan Kuso returns as a tutorial character in the game rather than his role as the main lead in the show. Runo? Julie? Marucho? Shun? Nah, don't need them anymore.
Sure, we've only seen a small chunk of the game so there's a lot we don't know. But we have a Bakugan DS game that looks like it plays better than this, so I don't feel like this game will be exciting. And before you say this game is meant for kids, so was the original concept, and it was far better.
Trailer, btw:
For those of you who do not know what Bakugan is, you have these little ball creatures that you throw out onto a battlefield and see them transform to do battle with each other. You place down Gate Cards or Trap Cards that can offer various effects, such as boosting the power level of your Bakugan or making it so your opponent can't swap out, among other things. You also have Ability Cards that do various things. You can send out three Bakugan at a time, and a battle occurs when two Bakugan meet on one Gate Card.
Yeah, so scrap all of that exciting stuff and you get this new game. You still send out Bakugan, but only one at a time, and they exchange slaps while you run around the field collecting energy tiles. These tiles power-up your Bakugan and allow you to use one of their abilities, but it looks pretty... boring and slow. The only returning Bakugan I've seen so far is Dragonoid, and he looks terrible, though there is one other returning Bakugan announced that I don't know the name of. The kid running around and trying not to get stepped on by their three-story tall monster is hilarious, though.
The field play of this game also seems sloppy, at least from what was shown so far. The animation framerate is choppy, loading takes a longer time than it should (a good three seconds before the game tells you you got an item after getting it), and it seems mostly like a "do this" scenario where you complete quests to progress. While nothing's really been shown for the story, I don't have high hopes for the base game play.
This may very well be based on the newer series of Bakugan cartoons, which bored me five minutes into the first episode because so many things felt way too out of place. This is apparent with the game's artstyle, and Dan Kuso returns as a tutorial character in the game rather than his role as the main lead in the show. Runo? Julie? Marucho? Shun? Nah, don't need them anymore.
Sure, we've only seen a small chunk of the game so there's a lot we don't know. But we have a Bakugan DS game that looks like it plays better than this, so I don't feel like this game will be exciting. And before you say this game is meant for kids, so was the original concept, and it was far better.
Trailer, btw:
