➤ Jump Force, the review 🎮

It is not the first time that the manga universes published in the Japanese weekly Shonen Jump collide in the same video game: it all started in 2005 with Jump Super Stars and later Jump Ultimate Stars on Nintendo DS, but then a few years ago there was also J-Stars Victory VS for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. Not there is nothing extraordinary about it Jump Force, in this respect, so that the developer Spike Chunsoft and the publisher Bandai Namco have well thought of celebrating the fiftieth birthday of the famous magazine with a trick bordering on crazy: they have made the most famous protagonists and villains of the manga collide in our world. A curious, risky and widely debated choice that, on balance, is perhaps even the most negligible in the huge mess that this fighting game is.

The story: from comics to reality

The story that justifies this mega Crossovers it is decidedly pretext, but considering the subject it could not be otherwise: it would have been impossible to credibly motivate the meeting of so many different worlds and character designs, so the developer has chosen the lesser evil. Our planet was suddenly invaded by a mysterious force that spread the cube shades, strange artifacts that manage to take control of certain individuals, causing them to become violent and aggressive. To hatch this evil plan was a criminal mind who hides behind some of the most famous villains of the gods manga: It is for this reason that the greatest heroes of all time have founded the Jump Force, an ever-expanding army that fights to destroy the umbras cubes, neutralize their negative influence and defeat the villains who want to conquer the universe.

At the beginning of the game we will have to create a character that will represent us in the Jump Force: after resisting the power of the umbras cube, we managed to defeat the venom - fighters possessed by this evil force - and we attracted the attention of Goku, Naruto and the other heroes who lead the Jump Force. The editor allows a fair amount of freedom, while referring to hairstyles, particular signs and other details that characterize the various characters taken from Jump. In any case, it is possible to unlock costumes, accessories and other items that will allow us to change the appearance of our alter ego at any time, and collecting them is an important aspect of the game. Also from this point of view, Jump Force is very reminiscent Dragon Ball Xenoverse: once we enter the base of operations, and after connecting to the network, we will find ourselves surrounded by the avatars of the other players, with whom we will be able to socialize marginally.

The story, in fact, is divided into various chapters, marked in turn by the key missions that can be accepted at the appropriate counters: initially we will have to recruit the various components of the Jump Force, and to do so we will have to defeat them while they are possessed by the umbras cubes, but then we will have to face the various enemies in the company of our favorites. There campaign it is quite long but tends to get repetitive quickly, rarely setting up interesting fights. Obviously, the fault lies with the banal script that brings together good and bad without paying particular attention to their relationships: it is clear that Bandai Namco is addressing an audience of fans who will be delighted even just to see Goku, Naruto and Luffy side by side, but we would not have regretted a more articulated plot and perhaps a greater number of quotes.

A botched graphics

If the story is not very engaging, the fault is also and above all of the staging. The speech is quite complex, so be patient. It all starts with the realistic character design that Bandai Namco has imposed in the context of this transition from the manga dimension to the planet Earth we live on. Thanks to'U, the protagonists of Dragon Ball, One Piece, Bleach and so on have taken on more realistic features, while maintaining their original appearance. Needless to say, this caused a stylistic inconsistency which is a real eyesore, because a mangaka's style like Eiichiro oda is very different from that, for example, of Tsukasa hojo, yet there they are, Monkey D. Luffy and Ryo Saeba, together on the same team.

It is a mixture that becomes evident in the cinematics in which the characters interact with each other, but perhaps even more so in the numerous sequences in which our heroes are dumbfounded to discuss only through lines of text, without even moving their mouths, standing up. like stockfish next to each other. The fact is that the discrepancy in the character design of the various characters and their realistic appearance are the minor problems of a title that was developed hastily and with little affection towards the source material. Graphically Jump Force is a game full of problems that Spike Chunsoft he tried to hide behind a riot of special effects, explosions and objectively very beautiful and spectacular particles. The polygonal models are clunky and clumsy, often summarily animated, and even the dubbing leaves something to be desired when you consider that many scenes are not even spoken.

In combat, in the deserted but richly detailed maps, the speed of the exchanges of blows, between explosions and sparks flying from all sides, prevents a less attentive eye from noticing the jerky animations and inaccurate collisions: the screen is filled with effects graphs, flashes of light and electric shocks every time you throw a punch, while a blur excessive blurs the image. The scene is shot by the camera behind the player: Jump Force is an arena brawler, a fighting in the third person that allows you to move freely around the battlefield, but at the same time prevents you from accurately calculating distances and seeing the enemy clearly when making a chain of attacks. The password is show and, in that sense, Spike Chunsoft did a great job. The most famous special attacks are extremely choreographic and carefully trace the original sources, whether they are printed or animated.

Press keys at random

As a brawler - a term that, in a fairly subtle way, differentiates the more technical fighting games from the more chaotic ones - Jump Force relies on a tested control system designed for a vast and savvy audience. The combo they are performed by pressing a single key repeatedly, perhaps in conjunction with different directions. Another key allows you to launch a charged attack that breaks through the opponent's guard or ignores normal hits. The other two buttons control the inevitable grab and jump. The backbones are certainly the most interesting keys, except for the parade which, pressed at the right time, allows us to move behind the opponent, interrupting his combos and starting one of our own. The other backbone makes us snap close to the enemy, but it consumes a indicator which recharges over time and which, in this way, prevents us from abusing lightning-fast movements. The same button, pressed with some timing, allows us to escape a combo and move away.

The last two backbones are of more strategic importance. One checks the tag team: In Jump Force you fight in teams of three on three, even if each character shares the same indicator of life with the others. The back button allows you to call an ally to attack and disappear, or replace the fighter we are controlling. The other dorsal key, pressed together with the front keys of the pad, allows you to use up to four different techniques: three of them consume one or more indicators that we can reload by hitting the enemy or by holding down the dorsal in question, while the last technique , the most powerful and spectacular, consumes the indicator of Awakening around the portrait of the character we are controlling. Awakening is perhaps the most interesting and studied mechanic of Jump Force: once the gauge is filled to 50%, the player can already use his deadly technique or temporarily transform himself into a more powerful version of himself; if you then wait for the indicator to reach 100%, you can access an even more lasting enhancement, too bad that the Awakening is charged by taking the hits, so it becomes a double-edged sword.

In reality, however, none of these mechanics influence combat in a decisive way, because in the chaos of battle, in the confusing succession of particle effects, it is difficult to know when is the right time to interrupt a combo, and it is often practically impossible to determine the distances. among the fighters: too bad that most of the special techniques is tied to a hold, a throw or a charge that triggers the animation of the attack, so that you find yourself sprinting uselessly towards the enemy who then turns out to be too far away or even too low to be centered by the initial blow of a character more tall. The imprecision of the collisions then, it further complicates life when you want to finish a combo with a special technique or attack the target while it is falling to the ground. It is a sloppy and imprecise combat system that relies only on visual spectacularity and that even manages to lose frames when the situation becomes too chaotic.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

There are 36 bronze, 11 silver and 2 gold trophies to unlock to get your hands on platinum: among other things you will have to finish the campaign, complete each mission and increase the level of the avatar and the others as much as possible personages.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Resources4Gaming.com

6.0

Readers (54)

6.2

Your vote

The realistic character design that caused so much discussion turned out to be only one of the problems of Jump Force, a title evidently developed in a hurry by a company that simply wanted to give manga fans a spectacular and immediate fighting game without worrying about taking care of it thoroughly. not only the gameplay, but also the graphics and sound. On balance, you can only recommend Jump Force to the most hardcore fans: the missions become repetitive after a few hours, the story does not encourage them to face them and the role-playing component leaves some time it finds, but there is no doubt that being in front of this playable mix of characters and universes will also amuse some.