Jump Force Beta Coverage

Jump Force has had its last Beta pass us by and the game itself is due to launch in a little under two weeks’ time on the 15^th of February 2019. What I want to do now is show a little of what I played during the Beta and my speculations of its content on launch. There will be a slide show of screenshots at the bottom. This won’t be a full review and won’t be scored since this is all Beta material and is subject to change for the final product. Developed by Spike Chunsoft and Published by Bandai Namco, Jump Force is releasing on the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

So the Beta didn’t go very smoothly to start off with. During the first Beta session I only managed to see a connection time out error and some of the pre-set avatars that you could choose from. They remedied this after the second session went the same way and cancelled the third and fourths sessions which were to be rescheduled. However, the rescheduled sessions did ultimately fix the issue and they even added a fifth session to make up for the first two.

The Beta allowed limited access to the multiplayer lobby of the game. This meant that whilst many objects and facilities could be seen they couldn’t be interacted with in any way and a message would pop up explaining how they had been disabled for the Beta. This still gives an idea that there will be certain things you can do in the lobby area such as possibly purchasing items or cosmetic appearances from the shop.

The main part of the Beta was the lobby counters where you could participate in two types of matches: Player vs. CPU which puts you in a match against a computer, and Quick-match which pits you against another random Beta player. To avoid compromising other players experiences I mainly played on the Player vs. CPU so I could test certain techniques and combos out relatively easily.

So what’s Jump Force actually about? Jump Force is a fighting game where the fighters are characters of various Manga from a Japanese anthology magazine called: Weekly Shōnen Jump. A lot of the Manga featured in the game have been adapted into anime too making some characters more popular and recognisable than others. However interest in Manga and Anime has been flourishing over in the West and as such the game is sure to have an audience even in countries such as the UK and US.

The story is set in a fictional alternate Earth where the fighters have been pulled from their respective universes and now have to save the Earth from a mysterious crisis. The Beta doesn’t actually cover any of the single player story other than showcasing the avatars. The Jump Force Beta showed six pre-set avatars but the full game is supposedly going to allow players to make their own character and give them abilities from other Jump characters.

The combat for the game is deep and intricate. It follows suit with many other fighting games such as Street Fighter, Tekken or Dragonball fighting games, the idea being that it’s easy to pick up and play but difficult to master. Each character in Jump Force has a rush attack, a heavy attack and a grab attack, each being slightly different in areas such as the damage they deal, how long they can combo for and the charge up time. You also have several other techniques such as blocking, dodging and counters. Counters can be performed with a button press at a precise moment such as just before you are grabbed by the enemy. It’s this sort of opportunity that can set two players apart, one who can button mash and the other who can counter successfully.

Each character also has two gauges. An energy gauge that you can charge up manually to use abilities and an awakening gauge that fills up as you take damage. The energy gauge has five bars that can be filled; using an ability will deplete some of these bars depending on the cost. All the characters in the game have three unique abilities and a unique awakened ability. The abilities are references to the Manga or Anime the character is from and as such they are all different, some for example might close in on the enemy and perform a hit combo, others may be a ranged energy attack, all of them however are balanced and is reflected upon by their usage and the energy cost. In the Beta each character had only three standard abilities, however it may be possible that there are more but that you can only have three assigned at once.

The awakening gauge is designed to be a “comeback” mechanic that gives the losing player an advantage. As the player is hit the gauge will fill and once it reaches the halfway point the player can choose to activate it and “awaken” their character. Awakened characters seem to have a number of advantages such as higher damage or fast charge up times. Many of the characters also have a cosmetic change when awakened such as Goku and Vegeta going Super Sayian or Naruto activating his Six Path Sage Mode. Some characters even have two different awakening forms depending on if they’ve been activated twice, i.e. Frieza going Full Power first and then Golden Frieza in round two. The main advantage of an awakened character however is the unique awakened ability they can use, each character’s move is different but they are all equally powerful and can turn the tide of the battle.

 

The combat is very satisfying from what I experienced. For starters it is a 3D fighting game as opposed to the 2D games like Street Fighter and the recent Dragon Ball FighterZ. This means you have an arena to fight in and can make full use of it to knock your enemy around, or likewise make a hasty retreat if the need arises. The odd thing is that each three character team shares a health bar, once the health bar reaches zero the round is over. There is also a match timer which when it runs out the player with the most health left wins.

The combat reminds me heavily of the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi fighting games which featured similar light, heavy and grab attacks and utilised the 3D fighting stages. The only differences being that other Manga and Anime’s are involved and that there is no dedicated energy attacks instead the characters use their energy abilities.

The characters that were available during the Beta are supposedly just the tip of the iceberg and Bandai Namco are continually releasing coverage on new characters that are in the game. Some of the notable mentions are: One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Bleach, Yu-gi-oh and Hunter x Hunter. But there are many many more in the game including some non-playable characters such as Light Yagami and Ryuk from Deathnote.

There were a few stages available to play in the Beta with the final Beta on the 2^nd of February having five stages to choose from, many based on real world locations. They were: Matterhorn, Hong Kong, New York, Mexico and the Dragon Ball Z location of Namek.

 

All in all this was just a brief summary of my experience playing the Beta, however I look forward to playing the full game when it launches. The combat is fluid, fun and engaging with plenty of characters to try out and includes someone for everyone in terms of playstyle. The concept of all of the different series converging is a interesting story and allows some fan questions of “Who would win…” to be played out, they’ve also made it fair and balanced with no one character being an easy winner or overpowered.

 

Jump Force will definitely be one to look out for and I will be looking forward to seeing how the story stacks in comparison to the Beta.

Played on the PS4

Screenshot Slide Show:

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