Zatch Bell! Mamodo Fury (PlayStation 2)

CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
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Overall score: 4.8 (2.0 stars)
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Product summary

Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Greg Mueller
• Reviewed on: 10/04/2006
• Updated on: 12/07/2006
• Released on: 09/19/2006

To the uninitiated, the intense, off-the-wall style of Zatch Bell! might seem uniquely bizarre, but its premise is really quite simple. There's a cast of hyper, interesting characters backed by a plot that basically just gives the characters a reason to fight one another. It's a design that works in publisher Namco Bandai's favor because it can just as easily be a video game as it can be anime, manga, or a collectible card game, which makes for seemingly endless opportunities to create effortless cash-ins. And that's exactly what Zatch Bell! Mamodo Fury is--a simplistic game built on the notion that fans of the license don't want or need anything more than to see their favorite characters in yet another venue, with no regard for the depth or quality of the experience. To its credit, the game does deliver a sizable cast of characters, a lengthy story mode, and a handful of ancillary gameplay modes. However, there's nothing in Mamodo Fury to instill a greater appreciation for the Zatch Bell! universe, and the fighting is much too shallow and repetitive to be fun.

Yes, that's a little boy (actually a demon) in a dress.

The story is about as vague as can be in Mamodo Fury. Every 1,000 years, demons known as mamodos come to earth to duke it out for the title of mamodo king. These mamodos can't fight alone, though. They need a human counterpart to read spells from a magic book. That means that you have a bunch of relatively normal humans, each with a quirky demon sidekick, who randomly encounter one another and engage in drawn-out, overblown battles. For all the time that it takes to fight, the story never goes anywhere, and the fighting accomplishes absolutely nothing.

That wouldn't be a problem if the fighting was actually fun, but it isn't. Mamodo Fury is a one-button fighting game. By default, you control a human character, and you hold the square button to cast spells with your mamodo. Depending on how long you hold the button, you'll charge up the level of the spells and your mamodo will perform different attacks. Each mamodo has four regular attacks, a defensive spell, and one super attack. However, you'll usually end up firing off the first-level spell because it's fast and usually the most effective technique. That means that the fighting consists of you running around tapping the square button over and over until you finish off your enemy. To make the combat even more tedious, you have a power gauge that determines how many times you can cast a spell. If your gauge is depleted, you have to wait until it recharges before you can attack. As a result, you'll usually end up firing off about three spells, then running around or hiding behind a barrier until your power is replenished, then repeating the same routine half a dozen times. There is a very minor payoff for doing this, because you'll charge up your super power. When you've done enough damage, you'll see an icon appear on the screen. At that point, you can charge up your attack all the way to initiate a super move. You then have a few seconds to press a random string of buttons, and then you can increase the strength of the attack by hitting another, separate, and once again random string of buttons. These super moves inflict major damage and are a guaranteed hit, so with any luck, a single move will put an end to the fight as soon as you unleash it.

There are a few ways to mix up the fighting, but they don't make it any more enjoyable. As a human character, you can't attack a mamodo, but you can attack another human character. You can run up to the opposing human character and try to knock the spell book out of his or her hands. If the collision detection is feeling favorable toward you at that moment, you'll knock the book away and your opponent won't be able to cast any spells until he or she retrieves the book. More often than not, you'll get right up on your opponent and whiff time and time again as you try to land a hit, and even if you do knock the book away, it will only buy you a couple of seconds, so it's not an effective way to fight.

You can also take direct control of your mamodo. Doing so leaves your human character immobile and vulnerable, but the benefit is that your power gauge recharges faster, and as a mamodo, you can directly damage another mamodo using the single melee attack you have at your disposal. Again, this technique isn't useful in the average fight, because leaving your human character in one spot is a surefire way to get creamed, and as the mamodo, you'll run into the aggravating problem of spotty collision detection.

There are plenty of characters in the game, but it will take you a very long time to unlock them all.

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