TGS: Anime Gamer Heaven

I'll be the first to admit that, compared to many gamers, my PS3 game collection is pretty small.  So small, that nearly half of the games I've played in the console's life have been licensed properties

High Moon's Transformers: Cybertron series, Batman: Arkham City, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, and later this year Batman: Arkham Origins and Injustice: GOTY.  When it's a series I enjoy, one of my favorite things is to have a game to let me play in that universe.  But unfortunately, as much of an anime junkie as I am, I've yet to come across and interesting anime-based video games.

Until this TGS when they came out all at once.  Life's funny like that.

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z

 The main problem with Dragon Ball Z is that after you get one really good game...what's left?  You get all the characters, all the forms, an fun story mode, and that's pretty much all you need.  Sure, they could add what-if stories and give certain characters various forms they didn't have in the anime...but they never do that.  So I'm personally of the opinion that there's really no point except once a generation to show what a DBZ game is like with new hardware.

Fortunately, there's been no new challenger to take the title of "Good DBZ" game, so the lane is still open for Battle of Z (stupid title or not).  Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z is intended to be a game where the defining difference is it's ability to do something you rarely ever saw in the actual anime: battle royale type fights, with up to 8 players able to battle each other in gigantic arenas.  The idea's novel enough and the trailers look fun, but how well they execute it remains to be seen. 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle

This game started out with an immense amount of hype behind it, sold a metric crapton, and then everyone proceeded to see what the game was actually like.  I was largely unaffected by this because the game hadn't been announced to make the trek over here.  Now that it has, I hope it undergoes a ton of balancing and a complete removal of the "F2P" aspect, because it really looks amazing and like the JoJo universe, strange as it is, has come to life in the clip above.

J-Stars Victory Vs.

Because of all the rights issues involved with the different anime belonging to different people in the West, there's approximately a 0.5% chance of this game ever seeing the light of day in America.  But who cares?  It looks fantastic, and so far it's included some of my favorite characters in anime, ever.  Seriously, seeing Yusuke and Gon beat the crap out of all the other irrelevant shonen heroes (kidding, I love most of these guys) is why they make games like this.

Anyway, TGS may have brought with it a ton of disappointments in an overall lack of gaming news, but I like to find bright spots in everything.  I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when at least two of these games hit the states next year, and as for J-Stars?  Well, I'm at least looking forward to seeing who else they put in there.  Hopefully Madoka-chan will make an appearance. 

Update: Here's one more to add to the pile...

 Gundam Extreme VS. Full Boost

I wasn't looking forward to importing two games in a single year, but Bandai has some sort of fear about localizing any Gundam games that aren't the Musou nonsense, even when its a legitimately good game that people might enjoy.  Well, I can't say I blame them since I doubt the sales will be the hottest, but with 90 mobile suits across every Gundam series (this one even has Gundams like the Xi from Hathaway's Flash), tons of missions and a pretty decent online component, I will say that its times like these I'm glad I'm learning Japanese.*


* Watch this be the one time they actually localize the game for the lulz.  The double-dipping from fans will be tearful and epic.