The Bouncer: PlayStation 2 Саяхаты

2000 beat 'em up video game

The Bouncer was Square's first game released internationally on the PlayStation 2, and although it received considerable press coverage before its release, and was greatly anticipated as one of the marquee titles in the first batch of PS2 games, it was met with poor sales and mixed reviews.

Controls in The Bouncer are similar to those in the Tobal series. Certain buttons denote high, middle, and low attacks, whilst others are used for jumping attacks, blocking, and special moves. Players have a health meter during gameplay, which, if depleted, means the player dies. Players also have a limited number of guard points available to them, although this is not represented by an onscreen meter. As the player blocks, the number of guard points diminish. When they are gone completely, the player can no longer block. The game's combat uses ragdoll physics, which allows characters to be launched several feet into the air, making it possible to juggle enemies by striking them repeatedly. Enemies can also be thrown or otherwise knocked into one another, causing all of them to take damage at once.

The Bouncer is structured as a series of short gameplay segments interspersed with cinematic cutscenes that tell the game's story. With the Active Character Selection (ACS) system, when a cutscene concludes, the player is given the choice to control one of the three protagonists and proceed onto the next gameplay segment. The player then controls this character for the duration of the level, whilst the other two characters are controlled by the AI. At the conclusion of each gameplay segment, the player is able to spend Bouncer Points (BP), the game's equivalent of experience points, using the Point Exchange System. BPs can be used to boost the character's statistics (health, power and guard) and unlock new fighting moves. Spending BPs allows the character to level up, with their rank graded on a letter scale from G to A, and finally, an S Rank. Typical gameplay in The Bouncer consists of the player fighting groups of enemies using hand to hand combat techniques. Occasionally, one of the AI controlled bouncers will do a taunt, prompting a button press to activate a team attack ("Trinity Rush") which damages all enemies on screen. However, the Trinity Rush is ineffective against some bosses. In some instances, the player is also tasked with activities other than fighting, such as running through a series of hallways to avoid being caught in a flood, finding a keycard, or fooling enemies into thinking the player is one of them. In general, a gameplay segment ends when the player has either defeated all of the enemies in the area, has defeated a boss enemy, or has achieved a set goal.

In addition to the main Story Mode, there is also a single player survival mode. Spanning ten stages and fifty enemies, every time the player survives a round, the gameplay gets progressively more difficult. At the start of each stage, the player's health bar does not return to full, but remains where it was at the end of the previous stage.

The Bouncer supports the PlayStation 2 multitap accessory, and the game's multiplayer Versus Mode supports up to four players simultaneously in the "Battle Royal" mode. Battle Royal can also be played by a single player against three AI controlled opponents, or by two players against two AI controlled opponents. On July 12, 1999, IGN reported that Square was working on three PlayStation 2 games; an unknown game, a Final Fantasy game and a fighting game, which was thought to be Ehrgeiz 2. Footage of the game was subsequently shown at the SIGGRAPH Convention in August, at which time the game was still thought to be Ehrgeiz 2. The footage showed the three main characters, which at that time were two men and one woman, fighting a group of ninja in a café. However, on August 23, MagicBox. com reported the game was not a sequel, but an original story. The title of the game was revealed on September 10, when Sony announced the PlayStation 2 launch titles. A non playable demo was shown at the Fall Tokyo Game Show in September. IGN reported "Square's "Seamless Action Battle System" means that players will roam from adventure sequence to fighting sequence without intermittent FMVs or cutscenes that look out of place; the adventure aspects blend seamlessly into massive street brawls involving as many ten characters." At the Spring Tokyo Game Show in March 2000, Square showed only a ten second clip of the game, and revealed no new screenshots or information. They also had no release date, leading some journalists to speculate there may be problems behind the scenes. At E3 in May, Square showed some new footage from the game, although they still did not provide a playable demo. IGN was underwhelmed with the new material, feeling there appeared to be too many cutscenes in relation to actual gameplay. On July 13, GameSpot revealed the game's character designs were being handled by Tetsuya Nomura, and the game would receive a simultaneous North American/Japanese release in late 2000. However, on September 1, IGN reported DreamFactory were having difficulty working with the PlayStation 2's hardware, and the game had been pushed back to January 2001. On September 19, IGN revealed that the game would feature Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound for the FMV cutscenes, and Square were attempting to use 5.1 sound for gameplay sections as well. GameSpot revealed more details about the game on September 20, including the three available modes of play: Story, Versus and Survival. They reported that Square expected the story mode to take players roughly seven to eight hours to complete thoroughly. On September 21, IGN published a roundtable interview with members of the development team; character designer Tetsuya Nomura, composers Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi, and co director Takashi Tokita. The developers outlined the gameplay mechanics, the branching story, the versus and survival modes, the music, the character design, and the challenges of working on the PlayStation 2 for the first time. The team also said the gameplay was partially derived from DreamFactory's Ehrgeiz and Tobal games, while graphically, the atmosphere was developed with the use of filters and lighting. On December 18, they confirmed a North American release date of January 30, 2001, although this was quickly pushed back to March. The game uses the bloom shader effect to soften rough edges.

The Bouncer was the first PlayStation 2 game to feature Dolby 5.1 sound, which was used specifically for the FMV sequences. In addition, it features voice acting with subtitles in both English and Japanese. Because the game was being considered for a North American release early in production, the English voices were recorded first. The Japanese voices were recorded and incorporated later to "provide more of a DVD quality to the game." Two separate soundtracks were released; one in Japan and one in North America. The Japanese version, The Bouncer Original Soundtrack, is a 2 disc, 29 track album, published on March 23, 2001, by DigiCube. The North American version, The Bouncer Original Video Game Soundtrack, is a single disc, 21 track album, published on March 26, 2001, by Tokyopop Soundtrax.

The Bouncer received "mixed or average reviews," and holds an aggregate score of 66 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on twenty reviews. IGN's Douglass C. Perry reviewed an import version of the game prior to its release in North America, and was disappointed with the lack of depth, but impressed by other aspects. He praised the graphics, character design and CGI cutscenes. He was also impressed with the "glowing" effect used throughout the game; "DreamFactory employs a Playboy like filter that smoothes out every single bit on the screen. The effect is consistent throughout the game, and rids the PS2 of aliasing or flickering, but also provides a unique gloss that's never been used before with such success." He concluded that, "despite the disappointments, I am absolutely having a great time with The Bouncer." In his official review of the game upon its North American release, Perry scored it 7 out of 10, writing "The game is a letdown, but not a catastrophic one. [ ] It's a good game, not a great one, and it's worth a look." He referred to Story Mode as a "mixed bag of good ideas executed ineffectively," although he praised multiplayer mode. He concluded "The Bouncer is not the next messiah, it's not the next wave of fighting, and frankly, it's not the paradigm for anything really new, except perhaps incredible looking graphics. These things said, The Bouncer is a decent game. It's not horrible, it's not brilliant. It's pretty average." In his full review, Jeff Gerstmann scored the game 6.7 out of 10. Of the graphics, he said "Everything, from the characters to the backgrounds, looks absolutely incredible." He concluded "The Bouncer makes a great showpiece for the PlayStation 2. It looks and sounds incredible. However, the ease and extremely short length of the game, matched with other problems like horrific camera angles and lack of a multiplayer story mode, make The Bouncer fair, at best." Game Revolution's Brian Gee awarded the game a C+. He wrote, "It's easy to tell what the developers focused on, because The Bouncer is obviously one of the best looking games on a console to date. Near flawless animations and picture perfect visuals make it a great choice to show off the sleek Sony super machine to your friends. Once the game begins, though, The Bouncer sheds pretty boy image and gets down and dirty." He was critical of the controls and the absence of a lock on feature. Like other critics, he also had problems with the camera and the ratio of cutscenes to gameplay. He concluded "Though many will undoubtedly be disappointed by The Bouncers inability to live up to the hype, others will find a fancy beat 'em up to pass a few hours. Its flashy graphics are at least worth taking a look at, but its many problems just might keep it from a place in the collection."

The Bouncer was a commercial failure. In its debut week in Japan, it sold 158,727 units, debuting as the fifth highest selling game across all systems. It went on to sell 219,858 units by the end of 2000, finishing as the 53rd highest selling game of the year, across all systems, and the 9th highest selling PlayStation 2 game of the year. It sold an additional 126,123 units in 2001, for a total of 345,981 units sold.