Chi Busters Review

Have you ever heard the concept of a self-insert? It more or less boils down to people putting a version of themselves into media, rather than carefully creating a unique character. Black Banshee Games takes this concept into overdrive with their new fighting game Chi Busters, throwing their entire staff into the title. The thing is, they forgot to create a good game in the process.

Chi Busters Review

Fighting games typically have a colorful roster of combatants to choose from. However, the 24 characters that make up the character select screen here are downright dull. Ryu and Ken are swapped out for Griffith and Pablo. All fighters hail from the development team, and feature a bio that details their work on the title. It’s pretty hard to tell them apart otherwise, as they all have the same superdeformed, low texture look to them all. It wouldn’t be surprising to see these characters made in a second-rate Mii Maker. The only way these characters stand out is through some copyright-breaking images of Dragon Ball Z’s Goku and Pokemon’s Pikachu on the clothing.

After players find out which artist, designer, or modeler they want to go with, they can choose from one of six different fighting arenas. With such names as “bowling” and “live event,” it’s clear that not much effort went into designing these areas either. All play exactly the same though, with both combatants placed in a circular ring.

However, when the fisticuffs begin, the lack of care and polish quickly becomes apparent. All fighters have two punch attacks, two kick attacks, a shield-raising block move, a dash, and a “special” move. Don’t expect to do quarter circle motions or directional inputs here – all fighting is done by mashing buttons until the other character has been defeated.

It’s not like standard attacks are reliable either – a single press of the heavy kick will have the player charge up and fly forward. There is no penalty for keeping your shield up indefinitely, and though players can sidestep in a 3D plane to avoid attacks, it will not do players much good. Get up close and personal to any combatant, and the camera will start shifting into the characters, above the characters, and flying every which way. It can be hard to see where players are in the grand scheme of things.

If anything the AI is absolutely braindead. The lack of difficulty options is just the start – opponents will literally avoid you if the player does not engage. On more than one occasion, we set the controller down and let the three minute timer run out. As it turns out, all of those matches ended in a draw with no damage dealt. There is no arcade mode, no survival mode, and no online play – just a single player mode with a single match and a two player mode with no options to play around with.

Chi Busters is broken on the most fundamental level, and only serves as a vain tribute to the development team and nothing more.

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