Squaresoft is unquestionably one of the industry's most popular and influential developers and when one company alone is said to make or break a system you can be sure everyone wants them on their side. But one must also remember that most of Square's popularity stems from their legendary Final Fantasy franchise. Once in a while they branch off and make something other than an RPG. Driving Emotion Type-S was written off by most due to its extremely unforgiving yet realistic handling (although I enjoyed the game), and their other offshoot is none other than The Bouncer. Square's first "action movie" on the PS2. To appreciate this game you must keep that in mind because it really is half movie, half game.

Gameplay
In its earlier stages of development, The Bouncer had received an incredible amount of hype. Unfortunately the end product simply does not live up to this hype in any way. Since the game is mostly a movie to watch the story is fairly important but it isn't very compelling. As the player and watcher you must control one of any three of the main characters through the game. These three are bouncer's for a local bar and their little homeless girl friend has been kidnapped by the psychotic special forces of Mikado Corporation and from there you must fight your way to their headquarters to save her while unraveling Mikado's reason for kidnapping her. The characters themselves however are more interesting than the story and seem to have animal traits such as the horns on Volt's forehead and the vaguely feline appearance of Echidna. It would have been nice to have a bit more character development and background but Dominique (the kidnapped girl) is the only one that you get to see in detail.

The first time the game is played through, it is quite impressive. But as you play through it for the 2nd and 3rd time, you begin to see just how annoying and odd it is to have to continually pause and skip cut-scenes that you've already seen. The fighting system overall is lacking and slow. Fighting sequences are scarce and often far too short and what makes things worse is that you have to share the space with your teammates! They often get in the way or steal end up killing an opponent that you were trying to kill to boost your experience points which can, ironically enough, make you want to give THEM a good ol' pounding. There are your typical high, medium, low and jumping attacks, which can also have more power by pushing the buttons harder. The jumping attacks are not what you may think. Unlike the Ninja Turtle's or Double Dragon games of past, players cannot jump and then execute a flying attack in mid-air, which takes the fun out of this, move. In The Bouncer you press the jump attack and your character will jump and attack your opponent all on their own. It just isn't as fun as the old way.

The character building adds significantly to the gameplay and replay value. You earn experience points by defeating enemies, which you can allocate to attributes and to "buy" special moves. These special moves can be easily executed but overall aren't incredibly exciting. Each character sees the main story through a slightly different perspective so you playing through three times is a good idea as well as three more times to build up your character's attributes.

In addition to the story mode, there is also a versus and survival mode. In versus mode you can play with up to four other people and use your built up characters from story mode. The same can be done in survival mode, except that this is a single player venture where you take on endless waves of opponents until you die. Then your score is recorded. Other than that, there is not much point to it.

The Bouncer doesn't seem to excel in any areas but of course this does not mean that the game is poor. It has an okay fighting system but it just doesn't bring anything new or innovative to the table.

Graphics
This is an eye-candy game and the graphics definitely show off Square's talent at creating beautiful, stylish and truly awe-inspiring visuals. The scenes are presented in a movie style fashion and are very convincingly done. It's amazing to see how much emotion and movement that can be seen in the animations. It's a testament to just how far computer graphics have come in a short time. Hair moves, eyes blink and subtle emotions on faces can be seen as well as mouths that move in sync with speech. It all produces a very life-like look.

Some of the cut-scenes appear to be of extremely high quality in detail while most of the others are toned down somewhat. I believe this was done to (literally) blur the barrier between FMV and real in-game graphics. Although the effect is pulled off well, the overall result is a blurred look on the textures and lots of motion-blur as well. You could say that it creates a unique look for The Bouncer but I would rather have a few jaggies over blurry mania. At least the frame rate doesn't drop and on the bright side all the characters look amazing and have lots of detail and definition. It's also a good bet that your lasting impression of this game will not be its gameplay but how good it looks.

Sound
Following a close second to visuals in quality, the music and effects are definitely top notch. The sound track for the cut-scenes never fails to impress and set the pace for whatever type of action is occurring. It's the next thing to being in a theater if you've got a decent surround sound system. The fighting sequences however don't sport the same quality of music or sound effects and are quite generic. They don't really add much to that part of the game but during these times you are usually too busy fighting to pay much attention to them.

Value
Replay value is what has been the cause of much controversy over The Bouncer and rightfully so. The game can be beaten easily in one sitting in less than three hours. Of course the game isn't really that short because to truly beat out the game you need to play it through at least six times. But I tend to see that as "cheap replay value" and it doesn't enhance the length of the game to a significant amount. Still, the creators set out to develop an "action movie" that emphasized a story driven, movie quality experience that was interactive in the sense that it was also a fighting game. It was a new idea that didn't go over very well. Is it worth the money? Well, if you've got the money to spend, sure. But if you are looking for an enthralling gameplay experience that will keep you busy for a while then this isn't the game you want. In the end The Bouncer is an okay game which highly under-delivered on what the hype predicted.