We Voiced the Loading Screens in The Bouncer
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Game Description:
The Bouncer (Japanese: バウンサー Hepburn: Baunsā) is a 2000 beat 'em up video game for the PlayStation 2 co-developed by Squaresoft and DreamFactory. It was published in Japan by Squaresoft in December 2000, in North America by Square Electronic Arts in March 2001, and in Europe by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in June 2001. The game was produced by Shinji Hashimoto, co-directed by Takashi Tokita and Seiichi Ishii, and features character designs by Tetsuya Nomura, and music by Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi.
The game tells the story of three bouncers in the fictional city of Edge on a rescue mission to save their young friend from the Mikado Group, a solar technology megacorporation owned by the megalomaniacal Dauragon C. Mikado. The game is structured like a "playable action movie," with the plot unfolding differently depending on which character the player chooses for specific gameplay sequences.
The Bouncer was Square's first game on the PlayStation 2, and although it received considerable press coverage before its release, and was greatly anticipated as one of the marquee titles in the first batch of PS2 games, it was met with poor sales and mixed reviews.
Controls in The Bouncer are similar to those in the Tobal series. Certain buttons denote high, middle, and low attacks, whilst others are used for jumping attacks, blocking, and special moves. Players have a health meter during gameplay, which, if depleted, means the player dies. Players also have a limited amount of guard points available to them, although this is not represented by an onscreen meter. As the player blocks, the amount of guard points diminish. When they are gone completely, the player can no longer block.
The game's combat uses ragdoll physics, which allows characters to be launched several feet into the air, making it possible to juggle enemies by striking them repeatedly. Enemies can also be thrown or otherwise knocked into one another, causing all of them to take damage at once.
Story Mode
The Bouncer is structured as a series of short gameplay segments interspersed with cinematic cutscenes that tell the game's story. With the Active Character Selection (ACS) system, when a cutscene concludes, the player is given the choice to control one of the three protagonists and proceed onto the next gameplay segment. The player then controls this character for the duration of the level, whilst the other two characters are controlled by the AI. At the conclusion of each gameplay segment, the player is able to spend Bouncer Points (BP), the game's equivalent of experience points, using the Point Exchange System. BPs can be used to boost the character's statistics (health, power and guard) and unlock new fighting moves. Spending BPs allows the character to level up, with their rank graded on a letter scale from G to A, and finally, an S-Rank.
Typical gameplay in The Bouncer consists of the player fighting groups of enemies using hand-to-hand combat techniques. Occasionally, one of the AI controlled bouncers will do a taunt, prompting a button-press to activate a team attack ("Trinity Rush") which damages all enemies on screen. However, the Trinity Rush is ineffective against some bosses. In some instances, the player will also be tasked with activities other than fighting, such as running through a series of hallways to avoid being caught in a flood, finding a keycard, or fooling enemies into thinking the player is one of them. In general, a gameplay segment ends when the player has either defeated all of the enemies in the area, has defeated a boss enemy, or has achieved a set goal.
Survival Mode
In addition to the main Story Mode, there is also a single-player survival mode. Spanning ten stages and fifty enemies, every time the player survives a round, the gameplay gets progressively harder. At the start of each stage, the player's health bar does not return to full, but remains where it was at the end of the previous stage.
Multiplayer
The Bouncer supports the PlayStation 2 multitap accessory, and the game's multiplayer Versus Mode supports up to four players simultaneously in the "Battle Royal" mode. Battle Royal can also be played by a single player against three AI controlled opponents, or by two players against two AI opponents.