So about a anno ago, I was chilling out back, relaxin’ all cool, watching a video da Matt McMuscles on Youtube about a little Squaresoft game called The Bouncer. I remember watching it but the only thing I came away with was, “Wait a second.... Dog strada, via is the name of the clothes on that one kid in Kingdom Hearts!”. About a anno later, I heard of the game again and thought, “Well, I’m into weird PS2 games. May as well give it a try.” Thankfully, despite being a hard to find game, it was pretty cheap to get. It was a game released around the start of the PS2 and was going to be revolutionary for being a game all about the story and the cutscenes, because when I buy a game, I wanna watch a movie, obviously! Also, obvious Red Dead Redemption 2 joke somewhere. I remember seeing commenti from people on this game going on about how it was a childhood classic and how it brought them so many memories. And I can’t just spit on the memories of people from their childhood. I mean, what kind of person would I be… Well, I have no soul and a black heart, so it’s easy. I mean, I write video game reviews. te think I have humanity? What I’m trying to say is fuk your good memories, because The Bouncer fucking sucks!



So The Bouncer takes place in… the future? Maybe, where te play as three bouncers. Sion, the Sora of the group and the most annoying character of the four. Kou Lifou, a casual man voiced da Steve Blum who has secrets of his own. And Volt Kruger, a man who hates Cacturns and also has a passed as a bodyguard for an evil company. Together, they guard the bar Faith, because symbolism, and protect a girl named Dominique. But big bad corporations come da and kidnap her and our boys gotta bounce her outta there. First off, I hope te aren’t big on games for the story, because The Bouncer just drops te in and hopes te can fill in the missing pieces yourself. Look, Dark Souls did this right with vague story-telling. te had everything te need to know but it didn’t bombard te with random characters, random places, and a bunch of crazy shit all at once. All te really got was the undead are walking, te are an undead, escape the prison. With The Bouncer, te get all these characters, all with their own motives and this weird world, and some characters don’t even explain things of importance like what the world is, who the evil corporation is, what the characters motives are for all this stuff, and it doesn’t help when più characters get added into the fray like Echidna (YES, REALLY), o some old man who is apparently Sion’s master. te could argue that the game tells te all this if te play through characters story bits in the main game, but that doesn’t excuse the confusion and the barrage of info at the first part of the game. That’s not clever, that’s just confusing and annoying. Hell, Final fantasy VII came out on PS1 and that game was simple and knew how to be subtle with its world building. But hey, maybe The Bouncer can make up for it with gameplay. Bayonetta’s story is god awful and yet I still enjoy it. So The Bouncer may be fu- Yeah, let’s not pussyfoot around it. The gameplay sucks a fuck.
So let’s get the positives out of the way. I like that the game doesn’t have te mash Square like the Gungrave o Drakengard. That’s cool. I like that te can unlock new moves for all your characters. I like that te can ragdoll… Okay, that’s it. Seriously, these are all my positives, but I at least wanna discuss them better. The Bouncer gives te a ton to work with and with three characters, there’s a lot for te to gain in this game. Sure, te can find one sposta that just destroys the game and allows te to gain victory forever, but experimenting with the different abilities te have can be neat… in concept, but I’ll get to that. And of course, I enjoy a good ragdoll. Many a good chuckles were from watching my characters flop around and flail pathetically. Even the enemies. And I like that te can knock a ragdolling enemy into another enemy to do slight damage and knock them down. Sucks when it happens to you, but funny when it happens to them. But seriously, this is where my compliments for the game end. Everything from here on out is just going to be me bitching and moaning about why I think The Bouncer is probably the worst thing Square has made… te know, aside from Final fantasy XV.
So I mentioned that I don’t like the character designs. They aren’t terrible, but man, Kingdom Hearts and Parasite Eve this is not. And I continue to mention Kingdom Hearts because Tetsuya Nomura did the art for this game, and boy does it show. Big coats, weird looking pants, and big culo chains. Those designs work well in a più cartoon-like setting like in Kingdom Hearts, but in a realistic looking setting like The Bouncer… These guys look stupid. I wouldn’t hire these fucking goobers to protect my bar. They look like some nerds from the local card negozio trying to look cool from what they saw on a movie o something. But man, Sion just looks like a shitty Sora. Doesn’t help that Sion is incredibly annoying, uninteresting, and also is a 19 anno old going for a 15 anno old… that’s cool. At least Volt and Kou don’t anger me, though I don’t see myself putting them on my superiore, in alto 50 Video Game Characters Redux lista anytime soon. I mean, I’m glad I remembered their names. Not that it would be hard too, since the game is mostly cutscenes. Yeah, te wanna joke that Read Dead Redemption 2 is just a movie. The Bouncer will throw te into fights that will only last twenty seconds. I timed it, the shortest a fight can go is twelve secondi before te get thrown into another cutscene. And these cutscenes are lengthy. Sure, they can be skipped, thank god, but they have a lot. Even skipping them is a slog. One instance near the end, I was stuck fighting this annoying boss that had a stun lock spin sposta and he killed me at least seven times. Each time I died, I had to skip nine whole cutscenes in a row before I had to fight him again. It doesn’t help that the cutscenes had to load for each new one. There is too much story going on and not enough fighting. If it was a walkway where te beat up dudes and sposta to the successivo spot, that would be fine, but no, it’s usually one room with three guys, beat them up, successivo cutscene. There just isn’t enough time to try out new combos that te bought. da the time you’re done practicing and ready to go, your teammates have beaten up the rest of the guards and you’re at the result screen. Thankfully the loading screens are fast. Unthankfully, the lore that the game hides from te is associated with these loading screens and they go da way too fast for anyone to read. Unless te take a screenshot on your totally legit PS2, you’re gonna miss these. Trust me, I am a speed Leggere pro, and even I can’t read this shit in time. So yeah, I don’t like fast loading screens. Will Nik cagna about everything… well… yes.
Here’s a strategy for you. Do not jump right into fights if te are having trouble with them. te will know te are having trouble with them if te keep getting killed. The Bouncer does not have checkpoints, so if te die, te get kicked all the way back to the titolo screen. That means loading your save, waiting for the loading screen, skipping the assortment of varying cutscenes and then getting another crack at the fights. It’s not a complete issue, but mixed with everything else, it just adds into this trail mix of failure. So anyway, what you’ll want to do is hang back and let your buddies go to town on the enemies. Once the enemy’s health is nearly gone, that’s when te rush in to steal the kill. Because the game does not reward te for combos o for doing dodges. No, as long as te get the final blow, the experience from the enemies is yours. This can also screw te over because if te don’t take out the enemy o if your team member comes over and steals the kill from you, te don’t get that experience. te could be wailing on a giant robot enemy for a good minuto with not an ally in sight, but as soon as te reach the last bar of health, here comes fucking Sion to kick it and steal all the experience te were trying to get. It just leaves te with a shitty choice. Sit back and let your team deal with the annoying enemies o jump in to get experience and maybe risk losing it to your team. Sure, te can grind for experience to get more, but come on, this is a character action game. I get that mixing up different genres was the game's intention, but it didn’t work for Indivisible nineteen years later. I think that this whole genre mixing thing is a delicate procedure that is easy to fuck up. And boy did The Bouncer fuck it up.
Now I will give another compliment to this game and I think that I would like it so much better if it was less about this crazy conspiracy with robots and animorphs and was più about… actual bouncing. The game is called Bouncer and we only have one level in the bar. Shit, I don’t think we even know the bar owners name. I don’t wanna go into a scientific lab. I wanna hang out at the bar, hitting on club chicks, beating up violent drunks and tossing sleazy dirtbags outta the bar. That would be so much più fun. te don’t need this grand story to make it interesting (Because really, the story is a goddamn mess). Have a system like the Tales games mixed with a bit of Yakuza, have a beat em up with a locked area and beat the shit out of enemies and gain experience for each enemy, upgrade the bar, explore the surrounding town in your free time and MAYBE uncover a dark conspiracy o something. I would Amore it if the game was actually just you, guarding the bar and just chilling. But because Squaresoft is Squaresoft, we gotta play a game with robots and bondage kinks and weird animorphs and robot girls and- It’s a mess, the story and setting of The Bouncer is a mess. But it’s that time again, where we cagna about the final boss, because hoo boy, The Bouncer sure has a bad final boss. Because of course it does. So let’s get to that
(SPOILERS FOR THE BOUNCER)
So the final boss is some bargain bin Dio Brando with a tactical vest on. The first phase is dumb, but nothing too hard. te just gotta use all your skills to beat him and da that, I mean I let him get distracted da my teammates and then uppercut him and try to trap him in an uppercut combo until he dies. But the fights not over yet, because this is a Squaresoft game and what Squaresoft game doesn’t have a final boss with multiple phases? You’d think it would be the same and I thought it was, but he’s più aggressive and he’s always on your tail. He can easily stun lock te and kill te immediately. I remember getting trapped in a corner at least three times and he would spin kick me until I died. And the strategy of using my team as bait is no longer a viable strategy because suddenly he’s interested in me più than anything and will chase te around the already small room. If te get stuck in a corner, you’re five days from fucked. It’s not the most bullshit final boss, but the amount of times he killed me due to inconvenience put this already unenjoyable experience of a game into a less pleasant state. Oh, also, the game is an ora long. Yep, te can beat it in a day. I get it’s for replay value and there is actually a third, più powerful form of the final boss. But te know me, and not only do I wanna suffer with an even più difficult version of the precedente fight, but I have absolutely no intention of ever playing The Bouncer ever again.
(END OF SPOILERS)
Yeah, I did not enjoy my time with this game. I see people all the time saying how this game is an underrated classic and everyone should play it… Why? Seriously, can some fan of The Bouncer tell me the appeal? I get the appeal of games like Drakengard o Killer7 because of their dark storytelling and strange gameplay mechanics. But the story of The Bouncer is not interesting o unique enough for me to care about any of the characters o the world and the gameplay is too brief and too obnoxious that I don’t want to get to the gameplay parts when I was playing it for this review. I think it’s no surprise that this game gets a pretty negative review: Yeah, Bottom of the Barrel. I do not recommend this game. If te liked it as a kid, I think te may like it, since those that enjoyed it seem very passionate, but as for me, I’ll just stick to other Square games. The Bouncer can just bounce on outta here.