The Scoreboard #12

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit

Best Achievement: Destructive Win! (5 pts.) Win a battle while changing or destroying the background. (Z Chronicles/Versus only) — Dragon Ball fans know all too well that scorching the Earth, among other planets, is a regular daily occurrence in creator Akira Toriyama’s universe. Destructive Win is kind of weak on the putting-out part of the deal, but we’re a huge proponent of cooking your opponent in a blazing Ki-blast inferno, only to come out the other side in space. You know, space? That’s where the planet was before you blew it up like a mini Death Star from the inside. This is awesome in itself, but adding Gamerscore to the deal is mint.

Worst Achievement: A Beginner Awakens! (5 pts.) Clear Basic tutorials. — Typically, The Scoreboard holds the Easiest Achievement slot for the brainless tutorials. Why should DBZ be any different? Burst Limit's tutorial is, without a doubt, the easiest tutorial on the planet, but it’s garnered itself a “Worst” award for making the player feel stupid. The lesson, which consists of about 30 seconds of text, is completed by moving your left stick when you're told and reading speech bubbles if you’re bored. Five points! You can keep it!

Just kidding. We’ll take it where we can get it.

Easiest Achievement: Battler (Default) (5 pts.) Play the Survival Trial (Default Drama). — Hungry? There’s no better time than starting up a Survival Trial to go nuke one of your favorite pizza pastries. Take your time, grab a java on the way back...the A.I. ain’t too bright. Honestly, all it takes for the Battler Achievement is starting a trial and getting a result — whether you win or lose is your call, so you can either fight it out until you win, or set down the controller while the confused computer-player circle-strafes you until it has an epiphany 30 seconds into the battle and realizes it can push its foot into your stomach. We chose the winner’s way out: munchies and Gamerscore.

Runner-Up: Bloodless Victory! (20 pts.) Win a battle without taking any damage. (Z Chronicles/Versus only) — Given how easy it is, we were shocked to find out that Bloodless Victory isn’t a five point–er. The simplicity of it comes from a little thing we like to call “exploitive action under desperate circumstances” — better known to you as cheating. Calm down: this isn’t the kind of cheat that’s going to wipe your Gamerscore and tarnish your precious Gamertag with a humiliating blemish. But if you’ve got the gall to turn on a second controller and clobber an unmanned player for a minute, you’ll be rolling in points. If you like, save yourself valuable seconds by depleting their health handicap before the match, you filthy cheater.

Hardest Achievement: Ultimate Z Fighter (100 pts.) Clear all of the Saga chapters at difficulty Z, with Z ranks. — Come on, Japan! What happened to the good ol’ days when our report cards were donned with A's through F's? Ever since your silly action games came along, we’ve been getting grounded for not getting an “S” grade, and now you’re adding a “Z”? You’re going to tear this family apart!

What makes this Achievement so tough is that difficulty Z doesn’t play around. That epiphany we mentioned earlier doesn’t happen — the A.I. already knows it can kill you, and it will. Relentlessly. It’s not the most technical fighter around, but if you want to brag about being a badass brawler, this is the Achievement that’ll prove it. We’re just going to go back to Street Fighter II.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 3 (out of 10) — If you aren’t dedicated to Burst Limit, you won’t get very far. You’ll get out of it what you put into it, so expect to spend some weary nights trading punches with Frieza, Bardock, and Broly to get the most Achievements out of this fast-paced fighter. Out of the gate, DBZ: BL tricks you, fooling you into thinking you’re scoring big, but the reality is, you’re only biting off bits of a much larger portion. Skip out unless you’ve got no responsibility in life.

Overall: 5 (out of 10) — If you manage to nab 200 points after a few hours of play, you can call it quits right there and be satisfied. Burst Limit offers a fair amount of unlockable badges for an equally fair amount of time, up until a point. By the time you think you've had enough, you’ve had enough. Only the hardcore should sink their teeth into the latest Dragon Ball Z.

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