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- Square EA
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The Bouncer
PlayStation 2
Released On: Mar 5, 2001
7.1
All Platforms
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 44 User Ratings
7.1
50% Positive
22 Ratings
22 Ratings
34% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
16% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 44 User Ratings
7.1
50% Positive
22 Ratings
22 Ratings
34% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
16% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
A amazing game, I loved it and played it throughout my childhood. Another reason this games was great, squaresoft! Character design was done beautiful and I'm playing this game as I write this review! 10/10 game Rpg/fighter great story!
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PlayStation 2
This is one of the greats! A game you can blaze through, Play the action movie as it were. But the fighting is unlike anything else.
Grab this game play through it I am sure you'll have a blast.
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PlayStation 2
I recently replayed this game on an emulator and let me tell you that my experience is just as good as it was back in 2001 when I first played it on the PS2.
Excellent game, worthy of a remake. Keep in mind that a remake has tons of room for improvement. A great example is Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
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PlayStation 2
The Bouncer is a beat-em-up game with mechanics that would have been revolutionary had they not been buried behind idiotic design choices. It reminds me of "Die by the Sword," in that the precise hit detection should have spawned a new genre of sequels and copycats with procedural action gameplay, but was instead lost and forgotten.
REVOLUTIONARY:
1) The game has PERFECT hit detection. It feels pixel-based, and it's better than what we have 15 years later today. What this does is it really makes the differences between each attack stand out so you can apply them to the situation, shifting strategies as enemies cluster, or flip. It keeps everything feeling procedural and organic, because the impact angles are always different.
2) Rag-doll physics for all human and cat characters (but not robots). Some beat-em-ups today do this (not enough), but the ragdoll in this game is probably the best I've seen, and at the time any real physics was novel, and they actually affect gameplay.
3) Enemies knock each other over when they collide. In combination with the perfect hit detection and rag-doll-physics, this opens up a world of strategy and replayability.
4) Two NPC allies stay with you almost the entire game and help in fights, although they can knock you down when they're hit.
IDIOTIC Design Choices:
1) No cooperative gameplay. The only multiplayer was the versus mode (up to 3-on-3 with 2 computer-controlled allies per, or free-for-all with 4 players). I would have killed for coop gameplay in the survival mode especially.
2) Encounters are way too short (3-5 enemies) before a frequent, overly-long cutscene and another upgrade/save/character-select point. The plot is so insipid you skip cutscenes on the first playthrough, but even that takes time. The characters are dressed for Final Fantasy, meaning they all universally look stupid aesthetically.
3) Walking movement in 3D was stiff, constantly arrested by an auto-lock-on mechanic that made it difficult to position yourself with the precision that the hit detection required.
4) Characters have 8 basic attacks (and paltry few combos) from 4 face buttons; this was one of the only games ever that distinguished between light and hard press on the PS2 controller. Picking attacks like that, rapid-fire in sequence, is just too much to ask from a player in a fast-paced beat-em-up.
5) There are no environmental hazards, ring-outs, or destructible/interactive objects in the environment. It's like the entire game takes place in one room where the background art shifts.
6) An RPG upgrade system, which never works in action videogames because it's always hard to calibrate how upgraded you need to be. So if you save up to buy new moves (which is my bias because I want to see **** least get the throw because it looks cool with the ragdoll effect) or switch characters midway to upgrade them, the game becomes impossible.
7) Then there are a few pointless sections without enemies or puzzles, just corridors with only one exit and literally nothing to do but proceed there; it's bizarre.
8) There's no "continue" option when you die (you have to load a save from the main menu) which just aggravates the steep difficulty curve and cheap bosses that begin appearing at the halfway point.
9) The game lasts 3 hours, although only 1 hour is actual new gameplay, the rest is cutscenes and restarting the same section over and over because of a super-cheap boss.
The upshot is a relatively fun game (worth a playthrough or two) with enormously squandered potential. In the 15 years since, only dinky indie games have attempted procedural/organic beat-em-up gameplay, and not nearly as well.
What probably went wrong is too much of Square's traditional Final Fantasy RPG influence. It's a shame, "The Bouncer" could have fixed itself into a superb 9/10 game just by adding cooperative play and deleting "features": delete the cutscenes, delete the RPG mechanics (spawn every character with all his moves), delete the robotic enemies, delete the invisible wall that keeps enemies from "ring-outs."
One more step beyond that--add in environmental hazards, make the arcade (not "story"; literally zero cutscenes would be better) mode longer, and maybe design characters that didn't look like they were caught inside a Lisa Frank warehouse explosion--and we're talking a perfect 10/10 game.
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PlayStation 2
Questo gioco era davvero bruttino. Il picchiaduro a scorrimento 3D con il peggior feedback dei colpi che io abbia mai giocato, con un abuso del sistema ragdoll ai limiti dell'impossibile con avversari che diventavano elastici di gomma molle ogni volta che venivano colpiti il tutto condito con una trama abbastanza discutibile. Non mi sento però in grado di dare un voto troppo basso perchè questa era la vecchia Squaresoft, quella coraggiosa che non aveva paura di mostrarsi con nuove IP, che si distaccavano dal classico RPG che loro tanto amano mungere oggi. Mi mancano questi coraggiosi "orrori".
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PlayStation 2
This game is sadly not good enough and for many reason, the main one being you only play 20min with 2h of cinematics. Also, the fights are all the same and the boss aren't quite interesting. The story is really complicated for nothing, adding secret agents, space machines, androids, etc... The only interesting thing about this game is how he probably influenced kingdom hearts but even that has never been confirmed
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PlayStation 2
I was really disappointed in this game when I got it and I was a kid. I was thinking that it would be like Streets of Rage. Square really screwed up. Terrible fighting game. People who like this don't own sega genesis and its many fighting games that are far superior. This game made me depressed because it was supposed to be a promising launch title. Bad controls bad fighting.
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PlayStation 2
Summary A typical evening at a local bar erupts into chaos as members of a Special Forces strike team descend through the roof to kidnap a young girl, Dominique. Three bouncers--Sion, Volt, and Kou--come to the rescue, only to see the invaders grab Dominique, retreat through a window, and escape. Now it's up to you to save Dominique either alone...
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- PlayStation 2
Initial Release Date: Mar 5, 2001
Developer:
- DreamFactory
Publisher: Square EA
Genres: