Random Video Game Review - Jump Force

Anime has come a long way in Eastern territories since the 90s. Part of that is down to the success of Cartoon Network's Toonami block (which we in the UK got too) which helped this part of the world be introduced to a wide range of them including popular favourites Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh!. But many of us may not know that these four anime shows all came from the same series of Japanese magazines which is collectively known as Jump. We owe much to them for introducing us to these many great shows and to celebrate their 50th anniversary, we get a fighting crossover game. Now I am aware that this isn't the first Jump crossover game out there. But it is one that has its own story involving as many characters from each series as possible and gives it some intensity to account for the super beings that characters like Luffy, Goku and Naruto are known to be (by the way, due to their voices being the original Japanese ones, I have decided not to say their names because of my spelling ability). Which may not be much of a reason to give this a solo review, but I'm going to do it anyway because I haven't played the other ones at the time of writing this up. So let's see what's up:

In a classic story of stopping a being from merging worlds into one, the worlds from the Jump magazines collide with the real world in an attempt for a mysterious being to find an artifact of sorts. With villains leading an army of beings known as venoms into destroying the world, a team known as Jump Force is created to fight back against the villains and their army while recruiting many Jump characters and real world civilians in the process. Goku and Trunks come across one civilian and with the power of a umbras cube, they bring him or her back to life and with new found powers to help in the effort. So the game is primarily a fighting game as previously mentioned in which players can take up to three characters (including their own if they wish) into 3D arena based battles. Each character has their own abilites with some requiring more effort to work than others (though its more simplified than other fighting games which is good for me), but you only use one character in the fight with the others acting as support as well as giving you the option to switch each character as and when you need to. Unlike most fighting games, your health bar and the opponents are all shared across each team. The game also has a hub world which is the Jump Force HQ in which you can customise your character's appearance, abilities and more. All the Jump characters look like themselves even in 3D which is good.

The game is ok at best. Some of us may not enjoy the lack of an English dub, but I am ok with that because it is a celebration of the different manga that Jump has done over the years which has translated well to screen and hearing it in Japanese makes it feel more at home. Gameplay isn't too innovative and most will be able to get stuck in almost instantly without too much complexity. So yeah its one more for the fans than anyone else, but still good fun nevertheless. 8/10