Kamen Rider Kuuga
Mr.Bueno

Introduction

When I stopped by a local mall, I passed through a local videogame shop that specializes in import games. As I flip through the catalogs of games in inventory, I find out that they have the Kamen Rider Kuuga videogame for Sony Playstation. Being a huge fan of Kamen Rider, there was no way I was gonna pass this deal up. I bought the game and went home to play it.

What is it About?

Kamen Rider Kuuga for the Sony Playstation/PSOne, is a 3D fighting game which (as most of you would know…) is based on the TV series of the same name. There’s 4 different modes of game play that the game has to offer: Story, 1 player, 2 player/VS, and Survival. In all modes, you collect “Digital Coins” which you are able to use in the Digital Card mode. This mode is basically like a “random roulette” where you pick one of many turned down cards. The cards that turn up are always random, so this gives the game a little bit of replay value. Picking cards uses up the amount of Digital Coins that you gain from the other modes, so the more coins you have, the more chances you get. Whenever you collect new cards, they will show up in your “Card File” where you can view the cards that you have collected. Collecting certain cards unlocks characters in the game, if you wanna be able to play as all of the characters, you have to get all the cards.

The fighting system in the game is pretty much like a watered down version of “Tekken”. You got a punch button, a kick button, a grab button, an evade button, and a special attack button. The Special attack button makes the fights in the 1 Player mode a little too easy and can be considered kinda cheap in the VS mode (Especially if you’re using Kuuga’s Titan form…). One thing that’s cool is that you can do a “Special Finisher” in which if you’re playing as one of Kuuga’s forms against a Gurongi, you can finish that monster off with Kuuga’s special finisher. Seeing Kuuga’s “Rider Kick” finish off a baddie was definitely cool to see. Not only that, but when a monster’s life bar is completely depleted, they’ll go into a “dizzy” sort of state. During that time, Kuuga will initiate his “Golden” mode in whatever form you might be playing as. Some special finishers will differ while in Golden mode (like Kuuga’s Dragon Form for example).

The story mode isn’t really in depth or interesting at all. When you fight, you basically have to follow certain rules for the fight by looking at the instructions that appear at the bottom of the screen. In between fights, there’s a short FMV where Sakurako reads out certain Gurongi hieroglyphs from the show. Heck, the game doesn’t even show Sakurako during the FMVs, which sucks cause she pretty hot. The 1 Player just goes straight to the fighting. In this mode, you randomly fight different characters and you’re able to do activate the Golden power mode to finish off a Gurongi. The 2 Player mode is basically the same as the 1 Player mode but head to head with another player. In Survival mode, you keep fighting as many opponents as you can. This mode is ideal for card collecting because the more fighters you defeat, the more Digital Coins you get from this mode.

Conclusion

People who aren’t fans of Kamen Rider are probably not going to go totally bonkers over a game like this since the Playstation already has enough 3D fighting games. But to those who like Kamen Rider (especially Kuuga), this game ain’t all that bad. It was pretty much made for real Kamen Rider freaks, but even a majority of Kamen Rider fans haven’t really liked the game all that much. So all in all, this game is something that you should get, only if you’re sure you want it. It makes a great collectible for any Kamen Rider and gives you a little taste of what to expect from the Kamen Rider Agito and Kamen Rider Ryuki games. It's not the greatest game on the market, but just average.

Mr.Bueno