I got our old PS2 working again, so I decided to pick a couple titles up from a retro games store near me. The guy at the counter told me this was one of his favourite games and said he was excited to know what I thought of it. That’s probably going to be an awkward conversation.

The good first, it’s a damn incredible looking game for its time. It honestly looks better graphically than some early PS3 games, and it’s running at 60 frames a second? Damn the PS2 was a good ass system. The general feel of hitting things is good, and the ragdoll physics are pretty funny. Kicking dudes into groups of other dudes like bowling pins was always fun, and watching your character do a cartwheel and flop around when he dies always made me laugh and softened the blow a bit. Other than that though, this game isn’t very good. Movement is sluggish, made worse by an automatic lock-on that means you can never really control what you’re aiming at. The timings for attacks and combos are very weird and unreliable. You basically have to throw the whole combo before the first hit even lands, so you can’t cancel out of it if it doesn’t connect. But on top of that, this is one of only a handful of games to use the dualshock’s pressure sensitive buttons for some combos and attacks, and I’m not talking some complex Tekken-style inputs here, I mean basic attack combos. They’re hard to pull off correctly at such a fast pace, so fighting is really awkward with you just finnicking around, trying to get the correct inputs and throwing out wrong moves left and right. All of this I found led to a lot of cheap deaths where I’m finnicking around trying to get combos to connect properly, and I just get screwed over because of it. It was especially bad during the boss fights. In addition to that, the game has a leveling system where you get points to spend on your stats, except you only get points for enemies you land the final blow on, so you have cases of your AI partners stealing your kills on you and you not having enough points to keep up with the escalating difficulty curve. A particularly frustrating incident was when I was fighting the first boss Echidna (who, by the way, straight up uses Eddy Gordo animations), and after dying to her again and again and again, I get her health down, about to land the final hit and….Volt kills her. There goes my big bonus.

This isn’t a particularly good game, but if nothing else, between the hilarious ragdoll physics and that incomprehensible, out of left field Nomura writing, I was laughing for much of the time. And it’s short. Even with all the trial and error and frustration, I beat the campaign with Sion in like a night.

This game is kinda rubbish. It feels like someone trying to recall Final Fantasy VII while drunk, and also while never having played Final Fantasy VII.

That said it's a triumph of maximalist late 90s/early 00s style. It's basically the last great psx game, and it's not even on the psx. It's as if someone had made a game out of the tribal-tattoo-design gba, but with more FMV.

Also, the combat is less bad than people say. Like it's STILL fairly bad, but I've played worse.

The Bouncer was obviously more of a technical demonstration of the PS2's power than a game to tease the level of quality the console's library would have though despite all that it's still actually kind of awesome. It's for an roughly 2 Hour hardware demonstration incredibly soulful and though it's as a brawler not that refined it's still really fun and once you get enough upgrades with the characters it's a true blast. It's a shame that The Bouncer never was meant for anything more it seems. There would be more than enough room for a sequel espicially with the amount of story each character has (Volt in particular). The Bouncer maybe short, unrefined and ultimately just a tech demo but it's still cool nonetheless and I recommend people espicially those who like games like Final Fight to actually give it a shot.
7/10

"the bouncer" for ps2 is a game called the Bouncer, in which you play as a bouncer. it is on the ps2.

i was initially drawn to the bouncer because i saw a four second clip of the guy going "the BOUNCEr" at the title screen. which was very funny. but then i saw the flashing, overedited, bloom-overloaded pre-menu cutscene that plays when you boot up the game. and as kitschy as it is, there's certainly something to like about it. so i gave it a try.

and i was delighted to find that the game continues to overindulge in that wonderful excess. aggressive bloom everywhere. awesome and eccentric character designs. awful (just awful), over the top, dogshit, etc. combat. "campy" is what you could call it. that's what i would call it.

tragically it isn't all so wonderful, as there is of course the matter of the combat. which i think i could overlook if it wasnt taking place in the most sauceless environments with terrible colour palettes, and if the enemies weren't complete chumps, and if the music wasnt the most boilerplate dramatic_music dot audio file format stuff. it's laughably balanced too, the protagonist is the weakest character by far; he's outclassed in damage, health and utility by the dude with the tats and the leather vest, so there's literally no reason to ever pick him. or you could just big the big dude with the facial piercings and tank everything, that works too.

mercifully it makes up the minority of the game, as the the Bouncer is short, and gameplay is not actually a focus. and it does still have its moments, like teaming up with the boys to take on a gang of lackeys, or stunlocking bosses with your combined attacks. so there is some fun to be had. overall very funny game i had a good time but i was certainly glad when it was over. the kind of game that probably had really good concept art, but kind of sucks (/ rules actually) in practicality

This is a game I just remembered existed and thought would make for a good stream. I watched a Let's Play of it aaaages ago, but I barely remembered any of it, and anyone I mentioned my consideration to stream this game to was really excited to see me play it. Thankfully, it's very easily acquired for the low low price of 100 yen around here, so it was pretty easy to acquire~. I beat it over the course of a little under two hours in one Twitch stream playing the game on the original hardware.

The Bouncer was toted as a sort of playable movie, and that's more or less how the story plays out. However, the story is something more akin to a cheaply produced action movie than some larger summer blockbuster. The titular bouncers of from a bar called Fate on Dog Street, and a girl they know named Dominique gets kidnapped by mysterious assassins who invade the bar one day. It ends up turning into a quest to save the girl and the world from the evil corporation, and it involves so many unimportant characters and weird twists of logic that it's certainly entertaining, albeit not exactly a great story XP. There are three playable characters, and depending on whom you play and when, the levels/scenes you play can change, but it doesn't exactly do anything to make the story more interesting. It more so just adds some replayability. The English script has been punched up a bit, but it's only really to the purpose of leaning into the campy, one-liner focused humor that the Japanese already has a fair amount of. The sillier English script definitely makes it more entertaining, but it's definitely not something I'd call a "must watch" by any means.

You'd also be much better off watching this game than playing it, because it plays BAD. This is a 3D brawler and Square's first game on the PS2, and it very much continues Square's trend of the PS1 era of more style than substance. The substance here is a very rough 3D brawler with RPG elements, and it can't even get that latter part right.

For starters, there is no way to control the camera or manually target enemies, so you're at the mercy of the arbitrary and bad auto-targeting system to try and attack enemies. Attacking enemies feels terrible because different attacks are mapped to different elements of the PS2's infamous pressure-sensitive buttons gimmick, where a light tap on O will give a different move than a firm press will. In practice, this makes fighting chaotic and confusing because it's actually REALLY hard to differentiate between what will be a firm press or a quick tap when you're in the heat of fighting bad guys. To add one last insult to injury, your fellow bouncers are often fighting alongside you, and while you'll get EXP if you get the last hit on an enemy, you get 0 EXP if one of your allies steals that last hit from you. It makes for a frustrating and not very fun fighting experience, and the only benefits it has are that the game isn't very long and it's also not terribly difficult.

The presentation is notable in that the characters were designed by Tetsuya Nomura (of Kingdom Hearts fame), but other than that it's nothing that special. None of the music is particularly memorable, and the character designs were mostly entertaining on the grounds that they look like a bunch of Kingdom Hearts rejects (which isn't the game's fault, as it came out significantly earlier than that did, but it is most certainly the fact of the matter in 2021 ^^;).


Verdict: Not Recommended. There's a weird multiplayer mode you can do as well if you feel like doing some Ehrgeiz (made by these same devs)-style bad 3D fighting with friends, but there really isn't anything this game offers that's worth putting your time or money into it. It's a much more entertaining game to watch the madness of than play yourself, and I would've felt pretty cheated paying much more than I did for it XP. It's memorable for being weird, sure, but that's damning with faint praise given how little else there is to praise in The Bouncer.

Was holding out hope for this to be secretly good, but that hope got tossed out the window the second it gives you control of a character. Lab-engineered to be the worst feeling brawler you've ever played type stuff. The good news is this game is like and hour and a half max + you can easily mash your way out of just about any battle. Oh and the game looks really good - it's a tech demo for the ps2 and the cutscenes are all phenomenal. They're also most of the game!

Other thoughts on "The Bouncer" - big fan of echidna's fit + hair, Volt Kreuger's massive rolled up jeans. Half trying (barely trying) to give backstory through unused script pages in the loading screens is insane + every time you die you have to brace yourself for THE BOUNCER and then the ritual of skipping at least six cutscenes to get back into it.

Fun to play with a friend, but also the kind of thing you will forget everything about a week later. I'm two days out while writing this and It feels like a lot is mostly gone already from my memory.

I, unapologetically, like this game.

Its story is laughable, its combat is a tad nebulous, its ragdoll physics are hysterical and kind of awful, its difficulty can get a bit frustrating, it REEKS of early 2000's punk edge...

But, I like this game. I like Sion, Volt, and Kou, their dumb shinannigans, and their quest to save a kidnapped girl. I like the cheesy, corny writing that's trying WAY too hard to be a relatively serious action movie filled with cliches. I like how enemies get tossed around like wet towels or slide down the stairs in the funniest ways. I like how the game can be relatively difficult as the game goes along.

I also like that the game has multiple different paths and endings, depending on what character you played as at what time, not necessarily changing the main beats, but definitely re-writing certain scenes or certain details, or including extra lore tied to the character being played. I like that story completion unlocks characters in Vs./Survival mode. I like that upgrading your character through the story will raise the characters rank, which will also affect difficulty of the game as well as upgrade Vs./Survival versions of the characters in the game.

I played and beat this game so much I've seen every cutscene and varient and I've also unlocked almost every character, including the True Final Boss with the devestaing 10 hit special attack that obliterated anyone caught in it. Survival mode is the mode I haven't beaten yet, which has the last "character" to unlock.

If you're looking for a really good beat-em-up, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a good RPG, look elsewhere. If you want to check out an interesting experiment of an experience done by Squaresoft, you could do worse. Even if you don't like it, I'm sure watching Sion slide down the stairs after being sent flying with an uppercut would give you more than enough entertainment for an afternoon or two. Best played with a like minded friend, either through couch Vs. or taking turns in the story.