Namco Bandai has the Saturday morning television stuff sewn up with its Kinect line-up it seems, boasting both Dragon Ball Z for Kinect and Power Rangers: Super Samurai – also for Kinect – providing more punching and kicking, motion-controlled japery than you can shake a stick at. Each game looks to offer high-energy martial arts action, and both titles had us out on the E3 showfloor looking undoubtedly like a complete tool as we flailed around trying to work out how to play them.
Starting with Dragon Ball Z for Kinect, we find ourselves inhabiting the body of Piccolo, as we take on Vegeta while floating above one of the anime series' typically expansive green plains. You view the action from a first-person viewpoint, while on the left of your HUD you can see some of the various steps and gestures you need to replicate in order to execute the pyrotechnic moves and fireworks. On the right hand of the screen, you can keep track of the moves you've pulled off, so you can learn the results of each of your actions.
Using Kinect, we started with some basic jabbing combos to get warmed up, smacking Vegeta around a bit. As you punch and kick, you'll see your character's limbs lashing out on-screen, giving you a nice bit of feedback, while the camera swoops around just like an episode of Dragon Ball Z. It's suitably dynamic and it works well enough, but if you're unfamiliar with the popular anime, you might not realise you have to charge up energy to unleash devastating moves that can turn the tide in a battle.
Guided by one of the game's devs, we're told to put our index and middle fingers to our forehead to charge a special move, at which point an energy gauge appears on the left of your HUD that steadily fills. Once fully charged, you can thrust your palm forward and blast your rival with a spectacular screen-filling impact. In this particular case, Piccolo performs a 'super beam cannon' tearing a huge furrow along the battlefield, sending Vegeta flying. Dragon Ball Z fans will no doubt be in heaven with this kind of thing.
That said, we did find that almost the entire duration of our hands-on had us jabbing wildly for a seemingly interminable amount of time. We realise that Dragon Ball Z battles are usually drawn out affairs, but we felt like we were flailing like a madman and making very little progress. Still, with the HUD showing us what we should have been doing, perhaps we should have paid more attention. After a while, we managed to vanquish Vegeta with a few super beams, thrown fireball projectiles and punches. Loads of punches. It's responsive, and we can see that Dragon Ball Z fans will most definitely enjoy what's on offer here.
Over 100 different moves from the series are supposedly in the game, despite us feeling like we used about three at the most, and there are more than 50 characters on the roster, although around 20 of these will be unlocked by scanning special QR codes. Chuck in over 30 minutes of bonus Dragon Ball Z anime footage, motion-controlled gameplay that works, and Dragon Ball Z for Kinect is a package that fans of the anime and comic books should certainly check out when it releases this October.
