Price: £39.99

Players: 1-4

The Bouncer is billed as the PS2's first game containing Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and full use of the pressure-sensitive analogue pad while you fight, but it's an intensively depressing experience. Let's start with the plot. A young girl called Dominique has been kidnapped and your trio of bouncers - Sion, Volt & Kou - have to save her. That's it. Remember the old arcade and ZX Spectrum beat-em-up Target: Renegade? It's like that but in 3D and without the ability to pick up items around you with which to batter your opponent.

There are three ways to play the game: Survival Mode: Fight horde after horde of enemies. Versus Mode: up to four players using a PS2 multi-tap Story Mode: Same as 'survival' but with pointless FMV sequences that you'll want to skip time and time again(!) The graphics are blurry most of the time making it nigh-on impossible to get any sense of involvement out of it and the sound is standard kick-punch nonsense. As I said before, it's the first PS2 game to contain Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, but this only occurs during a handful of FMV sequences - and not to particularly great effect at that either - while the rest of the game misses out on a great opportunity. Playing the game itself isn't the greatest of experiences. It states that the more you press the analogue buttons the harder the kick-punch delivered to the bad guys, but it's more like it doesn't matter how hard you press, you either kick the shit out of them or they do the same to you. According to the press blurb, each of the characters can learn up to seven or eight unique moves as the game progresses, but they still just deliver the same old same old.

It's all been done before and so much better at other times too. There's a nice moment when the train station explodes, but overall you'll get more excitement by setting the vibration to 'on', getting into a heavy fight and stuffing the controller down your pants.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT	0
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.