Beyblade

[Heath_Hindman]

The dullest blade in the box
Beyblade
by Heath_Hindman

Some people get rich by way of their talents, abilities, or great ideas. Professional athletes, inventors, and certain musicians are some examples of these people. The guy that came up with Beyblade, however, needs a swift beating and his money should be given away in an essay contest about copyright law. Why? Because Beyblade is a blatant rip-off of Pokemon, Digimon, Yugi-Oh, and Robopon combined.

Seriously, the originality here would be lucky to be described as "lacking." It uses the all-too-familiar concept of taking your creatures around to different areas, leveling up, and strengthening the characters in that special kid-type way. And, again in similarity to the aforementioned series, the story is quite half-assed. It's more of an excuse to have the game/cartoon.

Where the small difference lies between this and others of the same genre (you know, the "mon" genre) is in the stupid battles. You'll be spending the bulk of your time just watching your spinning top whirl around a ring and bumping into the enemy's every now and then. All you do is sit and hope to Heaven that you can move your poorly-controlled top in the right direction. Oh, oh, and once in a while, you get to take a defensive. And if you're a VERY good boy, you'll be able to pull off a special maneuver... but don't let that excite you, for it happens about once in a blue moon.

And while all this is going on, you have tin-canny sounds overlapping a hokey announcer shouting a recycled handful of stupid phrases to NO END! Argh! In my personal dictionary, this game's fight announcer will be used as an example definition of "irritating."

To conclude, the TV show isn't anything special, and the game proves similar in quality (or lack thereof). At only $10, it may be tempting to die-hard fans (are there any?), but even some of them may be turned off by the inhuman amount of patience required to play this crap.

-Heath Hindman, Editor in Chief, RPGLand.com

My thoughts on Beyblade for PlayStation.  Ew.