If you’re not at least somewhat knowledgeable with the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z, chances are you won’t be interested in this game. With that out of the way— Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit is the series’ first foray into the ‘next gen’ waters of the 360 and PS3. The jump to the more powerful systems brings along better graphics and smooth animations, but in the end the overall game still tells the same old stories from the television show and movies, bringing with it the same type of gameplay that we’ve seen several times in previous DBZ games.

Although the graphics are better this time around, the same can’t be said for the overall length of the single-player game. The Z Chronicles storyline only covers the initial Saiyan saga, Frieza and Cell sagas as well as some unlockable stories centering around Goku’s dad Bardock and the Legendary Super Saiyan Broly that were told in some of the Dragon Ball Z movies that came out long ago. With the short story, you should blow through it in just a few hours.

Much like the last game, the Z Chronicles chronology of events is as follows: Pick the chapter of saga you want to play (sometimes you have a couple choices); watch a loading screen with the Dragon Balls being hit pool style; watch a cutscene with the combatant’s voiceovers as well as ancillary characters; fight until someone is knocked out. If you win, watch the cutscene after the battle where you find out most of the time the bad guy is not quite dead yet. Rinse and repeat. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but these games are clearly stuck in a rut. Sales of course have told Atari that everything is well and good, but maybe they could hook up with the creator of the series, Mr. Akira Toriyama, and create a new storyline or be able to have some liberty with the characters? The art assets for every character except Buu (a later saga) is there, why not mix it up a bit instead of repurposing the same story and in this go around giving us a short list of sagas to play through?

Another problem that is baffling is that there are fewer characters available for the versus and online play match types than there were in the last game. Instead of having various levels of Goku, Gohan, Goten, Trunks and others we have their different age ranges, but no longer can you choose a higher powered form of those characters to start your battle. Instead you have to increase the Ki power in the game and then hit the R button, not trigger, to induce a transformation to the highest Super Saiyan level capable by that character in the confines of the sagas presented. The options from the last game are not transferred over here once again.

The new online play is pretty good, although it is unknown if every character is unlocked automatically at the beginning or you have to unlock them in the Z Chronicles. If it is like the other games in the Versus area you would have to unlock everything first. Unfortunately there are some lag issues. The good thing is that this game doesn’t necessarily depend on frame counting like the Virtua Fighter and Street Fighter games. This is basically beat the crap out of each other and unleash cool special powers once your Ki is lit up and you press the left button.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit is a decent enough entry for the license onto the higher powered next generation systems, but much was left behind from the last license iteration that it almost pales in comparison. There will probably be another game coming out since this series sells so well and hopefully they will expand the storyline and the number of characters available. Until that happens, this is a rental at best.

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