Dragon Ball: The Breakers

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Streaming’s a pretty big deal these days, isn’t it? There’s just something about watching people play video games that gets the masses all hot and bothered. That’s not surprising, really, and maybe we can think of streaming games as a logical extension of podcasting about games. Speaking of which, there’s a fantastic podcast about games called The State of Gaming here at Popzara that shows up once a month…but that’s neither here nor there. Just saying.

Streaming, in fact, is such a big deal that some games seem to be created almost entirely as an excuse for streamers to go ham on them, and a great example of this is Dead by Daylight. This asymmetrical horror romp has made its way to the top spots of Twitch on account of making for a fantastic viewing experience, and publishers have taken notice. Thus, we’ve got Dragon Ball: The Breakers, the vanguard of what looks like a nice chunky pack of licensed Dead by Daylight clones that’ll be hitting the scene soon enough.

via YouTube

What we’ve got here is a Dragon Ball-themed take on Dead by Daylight based in the same Time Patrol setting as the Dragon Ball: Xenoverse games. You’ll control a pathetic little unpowered Survivor dragged through a time rift. There, you’ll run for your life from a Raider – an iconic Dragon Ball villain like Cell, Frieza or Buu who’s out for blood. The Raiders are scary enough right from the start, but they’ll grow even more powerful as they take out Survivors and hapless NPC civilians. Along with changing forms and gaining powerful new attacks, Raiders are even capable of destroying entire chunks of the map at once.

The Survivors, seven in all, will try to escape the Raider’s notice and get back to a safe spacetime in a Super Time Machine that they’ll have to summon by powering generators…er, by collecting and placing Power Keys to summon the Machine. They’re also able to collect energy and transform into similarly iconic Dragon Ball heroes to take the fight to the Raider. Naturally, the Raider would like to stop this from happening, and they can win by killing all the Survivors or busting up the Super Time Machine and the backup Escape Time Machine that arrives once the main option is out of commission.

As is typical for this kind of game, players are given a quick tutorial before being tossed into the mix to serve as meat for Raider players. Said tutorial is helpful to some degree, but there’s definitely a sense of needing new blood that can get churned up to keep matches quick, as most of the keys to survival are going to be discovered through a huge amount of trial and error. Proper stealth and combat mechanics are definitely learned via the school of hard knocks, even when it comes to playing as a Raider – and even these villains aren’t completely invincible against a properly-organized and fully-charged horde of angry Survivors.

Breakers’ looks are, naturally, one of the selling points of the game. Nobody’s going to be playing this if they don’t love Dragon Ball, after all, and Breakers really nails the style and feel of the series, right down to your Survivor cowering as Frieza floats menacingly overhead. If there’s any complaint to be had outside of the me-too flavor of the gameplay, it’s that it can take a little while to find matches, particularly early on when it’s unlikely that you’ll last very long.

If you’re a Dead by Daylight fan who’d like to mix things up with some Dragon Ball flair, there’s nothing offensive about Dragon Ball: The Breakers. Newcomers to the genre might be best served cutting their teeth with the original game, of course, particularly since it’s a little more feature-rich and there’s never any trouble finding matches. As for those of you looking for another take on the idea entirely, well…you know Konami announced a Silent Hill-themed take on this, right?