The Bloody Roar series, which debuted on the old-school PlayStation in 1997, is a fighting franchise with novice-friendly gameplay and a wonderful gimmick in the form of a cast of characters who can change into super-sized critters: Yugo the Wolf, Bakuryu the Mole, Jenny the Bat, et cetera. (Man, that sounds like the world's oddest collection of gangsters.) While a few of the franchise's recurring characters drag the premise into the realm of silliness -- that's right, Alice the Rabbit, I'm talking to you -- most of them are clever and original choices.

Having spun Bloody Roar 3 out as much as possible via porting it to the GameCube and Xbox under the respective guises of Bloody Roar: Primal Fury and Bloody Roar Extreme, Hudson is finally beavering away on a genuine sequel. Activision published BR3 on PS2 and GCN, but Hudson has reemerged in the U.S. and handles publishing duties itself, making it the third company to handle the franchise in the States; SCEA published the first and second iterations.

While Hudson has added several new characters and a load of secondary options and features, the gameplay is largely unchanged from uno, dos, y tres. Punching, kicking, and guarding are each mapped to a face button, with the fourth button used to transform and execute special attacks; the L2 and R2 buttons are used to sidestep. The most spastic newbie can pick up the controller and instantly bust out spectacular combos, especially after transforming into a critter, but that's always been the direction of the series; if Hudson wanted to cater to the hardcore, they would've started doing so five years ago. At least in its current state, Roar 4's gameplay is, for better or worse, the epitome of button-mashing. That's not meant as a slam, either; a shallow fighter can, in its way, be just as entertaining as a deep fighter.

Momma said to knock you out!
Your character has two meters in combat: a red life meter and a blue beast meter. When fighting in human form, the life meter decreases, and the beast meter increases, as you take damage; you can also boost the beast meter by scoring hits on your opponent. When you fight as an animal, only the beast meter decreases. If your life meter is emptied, you either die (if the beast meter is tapped out) or you automatically switch into beast form for the remainder of the fight. If your beast meter is emptied, you automatically switch into human form until you have enough energy to once again transform. It's a slightly confusing new system, and it doesn't really introduce any strategy, since there's no strategic advantage to not fighting in your transformed state. Ah, well.