Sunday 17 January 2021

Game Pass: Power Ranger Battle for the Grid

 Whoops, it's Game Pass, not Games Pass, oh well. The next game I picked up lead me down a rabbit hole of researching Power Rangers Comics, watching a Youtube documentary and the 2017 Power Rangers (not enough Green Ranger), so, that was a thing for a couple of days and indeed, another reason to delay starting Gears Tactics, though I'm getting deep in to that now, at least until I get distracted again, HyperDot is calling out to me right now (edit, it's awesome).

After going on a rant in my last post about brawlers, I failed to mention a game (well, a few really, but only one is relevant here), that being Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Mega Battle, an acceptable brawler from a few years ago, and a fine sequel (in my mind) to the two Mega drive Power Rangers brawlers, The movie one being of particular interest to me at the time, as it had both the original and what I will refer to as the 'Rocky cast' (remember how bad of an actor that guy was, I was 7 and could tell he was crap) as well as multiple different Megazords, of course, being a child, having a game based on a franchise I liked at the time made it seem better to me, and though I haven't touched this game in probably 25 years, most franchise games from that era tend to be terrible retrospectively, so maybe it was, but I don't want to know. Point is, the game that came out a few years ago was heavy on presentation and nostalgic references, and pretty light on it actually being that good of a game, so i went in here expecting essentially the same thing, but in a fighting game instead.

But what a pleasant surprise, it was pretty good. Certainly no Street Fighter 2 (the 30 year old untoppleable (is that a word) pinnacle of the genre) but still fun. a 3 on 3 team fighting game, with just a few buttons, simple to use combos to learn, special moves, Zord attacks and some extremely over powered characters. Jason should be the best one anyway, he is the leader after all and if I lost him in a shopping center, I would be frantically calling after him too.




Aside from just versus mode and classic arcade mode, there is a story mode in here, which seems to be the normal now in fighting games after I first encountered it in Injustice, and just like Injustice, the story was lifted straight from Comic books. As mentioned earlier, I did some research on the modern comics, because that's where the story for this comes from (apparently they're really good, but a couple of times in my life I tried to get in to comics, but can't (books are better anyways (not that I can be bothered to read them either))), with a transdimentional Tommy Oliver, having teamed up with Rita rather than performing his classic Mighty Morphin face turn, then killed her, took her armies and conquered the universe and now he's come for the rest of 'em. It's a decent enough story in the game, but as with every other fighting game story, there's only so many characters and possible match ups that the lack of variety gets a bit tiresome. There doesn't even need to be though, even though there is a season pass you have to buy to unlock many of the characters and skins ((which is pretty shitty) though not as egregious as street fighter 5), it allows you to play as some of these charters in the story mode, but nowhere near all of them. Then, when I finished the story (which came with no achievements!!!!) I assumed something would be unlocked, Kimberley was heavily involved in the story for instance, but no. Gotta spend that cash I guess (hope there's enough left over to pay off my tab at the Juice bar).

Once that was all done with, it was morphin to online play-time (too much of a stretch?), and after 10 successive wins, knocking off considerably higher rated players than myself I knew I could go pro. Obviously after I met my first loss I gave up and never played again, thus keeping a fantastic win to loss record in the only way I know how to get one. As Farkas Bulkmeier once told me 'quit while you're ahead', then he beat me up and took my lunch money (that's a thing in America, right?).

This game gets the rating of Game Pass, another that's passed my test of a game (whatever that is). An enjoyable fighting game that doesn't require great skills to succeed, so grab your Dragon Dagger and make your excitement grow for this very good fighter.


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Still slugging through Gears Tactics, it's good but really could've done without some of the side missions. PS. I can't believe the words 'Morphin', 'Megazord' or 'Megadrive' aren't in the dictionary on this site, they're on the one in my head.

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