'Bakugan Battle Brawlers' review

October 26, 2:39 PMSeattle Xbox 360 ExaminerAlex Bauman

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When 'Bakugan Battle Brawlers' arrived in the mail I was not looking forward to playing it let alone writing this review. But thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the next big thing; it's not a 'Halo' killer. What it is is *spoiler warning* a game for kids, with just enough substance to keep an adult interested for a little while.

The animation and art style in 'BBB' are both spot on and really great to look at, in both the cut scenes and the game proper.  There are no multi layers textures or super realistic physics engine, nothing to stress out the computing power of the 360. While the clean battle animations and anime style cut scenes wont sell copies they would utterly destroy the playability of the game and the credibility of the designers if they were done poorly.

The gameplay (read: hot Bakugan on Bakugan action) is complex in it's simplicity. Playing 'Bakugan Battle Brawlers' is a lot like playing Chess. In fact 'BBB' plays like a crazy amalgamation of Battle Chess and Magic: The Gathering. And this is where parents will have a little fun. The strategic elements in 'BBB' are fun to play with. Building a deck of cards that work together and forming a three Bakugan team that compliment each other and work with your cards; stacking power on power to crush the competition! That's fun stuff.

The story takes a back seat in 'Bakugan Battle Brawlers' and that's ok. The game is'nt called "The Story of Bakugan" or "Bakugan Story Brawlers"; fighting Bakugan is the game. The only real problem with 'BBB' is the repetition, not so much in the gameplay (although it's pretty repetitive) but in the menus. Yeah the menus. Maybe not the menus themselves but the fact that every menu option is spoken by someone every time you move the cursor over it; it gets real aggravating real fast.

Bottom Line: If you are a big fan of Bakugan 'Bakugan Battle Brawlers' is the game for you. You got a little one in your life who enjoys the Bakugans, here's your chance to be the hero of Christmas. Lite strategy, Chess, or Othello your cup of tea and you don't hate anime mini monsters? Check out 'BBB'. Don't fit into any of those categories? You'll probably want to skip this one.

Totally random arbitrary numerical score: 197,854,307