Zatch Bell: Mamodo Battles is yet another anime to videogame translation, and much like Inuyasha: Feudal Combat it's a very simplistic and unrewarding fighting game that's aimed to primarily satisfy fans of the series. Bandai was kind (or devious) enough to send us a preview build of the game and I spent all Friday afternoon torturing myself with it, but since this isn't my final review I'm going to reserve final judgment until Zatch's October 11 release, so just soak in these "impressions" and pretend that I'm enthusiastic.

For the uninformed, Zatch Bell is an anime series starring these cute little dudes known as Mamodo. These guys and gals travel to Earth every 1,000 years to pretty much beat the hell out of one another, the goal to become the undisputed Mamodo King. The only catch is, for all of their super martial arts skills and magical powers they need to team up with a human partner in order to tap into their spell books. Once that happens, the rumble begins, a series of brutal encounters full of fire balls, explosions, tag team maneuvers, and explosive special attacks.

My first thought upon seeing this title was of Inuyasha: Feudal Combat, and to a degree the two are very similar. This is a bare bones fighting game that allows you to run around within an enclosed 3D space and button mash like crazy. Sadly, the gameplay has nothing to do with figuring out how to unleash a bone shattering combo maneuvers. Instead, the only buttons that you'll need to remember are Up and X, Down and X, Left and X, Up and Square, Left and Square, and so on and so forth. It's very underwhelming, especially since you can't tag out to your human partner. Like Inuyasha, the other characters are controlled by the AI, and while you can summon them to open the special books and cast spells, that's about all that they're good for.

Story Mode is sort of interesting. You can select from 6 teams (Zatch, Tia, Kanchome, Brago, and two unlockables), and you basically travel to a bunch of colorful locales kicking the crap out of other Mamodo. It's a fairly standard mode that's made worse by the annoying fact that you can select a location, sit through a brief load screen and then discover that there's no one to fight, meaning you have to exit and sit through the same exact loading screen. The game doesn't inform you of where the next battle will take place, so you'll need to make an educated guess.

I might look past this flaw if the battles were actually impressive but that's far from the case. Again, there's very little strategy to this game and the stories make little sense. For example, my very first encounter was with this horse named Ponygon. Tia (the Mamodo) and her human partner Megumi were preparing for a trip to England and Ponygon wanted to go. Tia said no and Ponygon got all pissy and challenged them to a fight. So I kicked his ass all over the Mochinoki Middle School, or the Mochinoki Park, or the Mochinoki Department Store (I don't know where I was), and then all was ok. Tia said that she'd bring him a souvenir and that made Ponygon happy. Basically, he had a temper tantrum, I nearly turned him into glue, and all I had to do to patch things up was promise to buy him something stupid.

The rest of the stories aren't much better. These kids (I suppose they're kids) just want to bludgeon one another for no other reason than to become King, but the game has this "No hard feelings" attitude. In other words, this is just business to them. After it's all over, the winners will buy the losers a Coke, that sort of thing. In a way it's very child like and I don't credit Bandai for anything, but it's exactly like how kids fight. One minute they hate one another and the next they're cool.

Everyone's got a ranged attack but these special moves don't last forever. At some point the Mamodo will run out of gas and need to recharge. Then there are also individualized special attacks and these are truly something to see. Zatch and Kiyo, for example, conjure this humongous yellow dragon that pretty much annihilates an opponent's health bar. It's not fabulously detailed, but it's definitely pretty to watch.

The rest of the game is equally good looking. The cell shaded characters are a nice contrast to the 3D backgrounds, and everything, from particle effects to the still frames are vibrant and full of color. The loading screen before a fight is actually one of the best that I've seen.

To its credit, there are quite a few teams in this game including Bari/Gustav, Brago/Sherry, Tia/Megumi, and many more. There are also a ton of levels such as the Middle School, London Suburbs, The Quarry, Holland Suburbs, South Pole, Doc's Home, Fairy Woods, the River Bed, and several others, so if anything, there's some variety here. There's also Time Attack, Develop Mode (where you can use points to upgrade a character's Striking Power, Spell Power, and HP), Practice, a Bonus Mode that enables you to unlock and collect cards, 1P versus mode, and then 2P versus.

As for the aural component, it's a mixture of decent music and annoying voices. This is the type of stuff that I assume little girls and strange dudes will love, so if you consider yourself to be mature you'll probably be unable to bear the over the top acting.

But the bottom line is this game is actually more enjoyable than Inuyasha: Feudal Combat, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I like it. "Tolerate" is the more appropriate word. I'll return with a full review as we near Zatch Bell's October 11 release date, but don't expect me to be singing its praises.