bakugan-150Like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! before it, Bakugan is the latest craze in the monster battling, anime-inspired collectible card games that are incredibly popular with the pre-teen crowd, and it seems it has finally made its way to a video game. Bakugan: Battle Brawlers for Wii is the result.

Admittedly I’ve never seen the anime or played the card game before, so it was my first venture into the Bakugan universe, and I’m not impressed. The game is based around two (and sometimes four) players facing off their respectful Bakugan creatures in a specialised arena, playing to win three gate cards before your opponent/s. You win gate cards by either landing two Bakugans onto a single arena card, which you place at the beginning of the match, or by winning a battle against an opponent’s Bakugan. That’s the basic idea of the game.

To land a Bakugan onto an arena card, you first have to choose one of your three Bakugans, (still in ball form) choose either a regular or a power throw, and use a basic gesture with the Wii Remote to land onto the card. That part actually works quite well, and if you miss the card on your throw you can gain direct control of the Bakugan and direct it around the arena until you reach a card. This process, unfortunately, makes it very easy to land a Bakugan, and a lot of the time the AI opponents will miss the card completely, which makes it seem as though the game is unfairly giving you the upper hand.

Once you and your opponent land on the same arena card, a battle is triggered. I’m sure you’re thinking something like, “The battling is where it gets good, right?” Wrong. Each Bakugan has a set number of G-Power, and whichever Bakugan has more G-Power than the other wins the match. You can use Ability cards to raise your creature’s G-Power by a set amount, though with most cards it’s a very insignificant boost that won’t greatly affect the battle.

Then there’s one of three mini-games to be played against the opponent, either a Guitar Hero-like rhythm-based gesture type affair, a shooting gallery in which you have to hit the symbol of your Bakugan as many times as you can before the time runs out, and a shaking game where all you have to do is viciously shake the Wii Remote for a short period of time. These mini games are pretty poor, but they are what makes most of the difference in the battles, as the AI here is quite weak, and can give you a serious edge if your opponent has a much stronger Bakugan than you.

Needs more bloodshed.

Then there’s a short cut scene in which the stronger Bakugan attacks the weaker one, making him faint. The creatures themselves actually look pretty good, but the battles look terrible as you simply see the winner attacking in one scene, and the loser fainting in the other, (similar to the Pokémon Stadium battles scenes) this making the experience feel nowhere near as satisfying as it should when you defeat a rival beast.

Similar to the mini-games, the story mode doesn’t add much to the game either. I assume it follows a story akin to the anime, as the opening to the television show is presented at the start of the game, though it follows a new character, (you) climbing up the ranks in Bakugan competitions and so forth. All the same voice actors from the series appear in the game, which I suppose is something notable, but the voice acting is really grating and the syncing with the video is often atrocious. The pop rock guitar riffs are equally annoying, but they fit in with the game quite well, and combine with the effects perfectly.

Overall, Bakugan: Battle Brawlers is a very forgettable experience. The battles, which should be the most exciting part, are boring, but the anime style graphics, along with the cheesy voice acting and sound effects, fit the game very well. The fact is that the large numbers of licensed games on the Wii constantly prove to be second-rate, and though there are better games than this for Wii, you could do a lot worse than Bakugan. I’d still recommend most of you to give this a miss; unless you’re a hardcore fan of the series or trading card games you probably won’t get much out of it.

By Ben Hauser

Graphics: B-

Nice looking anime style, though there are a lot of jaggies and the battle scenes are too boring.

Sound: B-

It’s nice to see the original voice actors in the game, but the sound, while fitting, really grates after too long.

Gameplay: C

The battles are quite boring for the uninitiated, though hardcore fans might get a kick out of them.

Overall: C+

As seems to be the trend lately with licensed games, it’s not very good, and you’ll probably only like it if you’re in the target audience of Bakugan fanatics.