Powerstone 2 Beta Review

By David Sirlin

March, 28 2000 | Powerstone 2 is on test at Sunnyvale Golfland, so I stopped by and played it for about 45 minutes. One thing is for sure: it's not your grandpa's Powerstone. It's pretty much everything Powerstone 1 was (and wasn't) but 10 times more of it.

4 Player System
The game supports 4 players via two linked cabinets. There's a "versus" mode and "cooperative" mode. In either mode, each battle is between 4 characters. If there are fewer than 4 humans playing, then the computer will play the other slots. The winners are the last two alive in a battle. In versus mode, the winners stay and the losers pay. In cooperative mode, the winners (if one or both are human) will advance to the next battle in the series.

Powerstone 2 is a free-for-all. There are no formal partners or teams in this game. Everyone can do damage to everyone else. You can of course gang up on someone, but that just means you try your best not to hit your friend, a challenging notion considering the sheer amount of crap happening. And here's a weird feature: you can bring a dead character back to life! When you die in Powerstone 2, the word "help" appears over your body. Any remaining character can stand over you and press the throw button to pick you up, returning you to life. You only have a tiny bit of life meter, but you're alive. Remember, the game ends when there are *two* characters dead.

Controls
The three buttons (from left to right) are: punch, jump, and throw. No more kick button. Collect gems to transform yourself into "unfair mode" just like before, though now there are more than 3 total gems. While in unfair mode, the punch+jump is one super move; jump+throw is another.

Stages
There are 5 stages and boy, let me tell you they are pretty damn impressive. Each one is more elaborate than any stage in any fighting game. They're beautifully 3D rendered, colorful, and ridiculously interactive. As if that weren't enough, most of them have multiple parts to them. On the Airship stage, you fight atop a hovering airship for awhile, then you all fall off and enter this skydiving mode(!) where you can still fight and as you fall. Eventually, you all land and continue fighting in a totally different area. Most stages (all but the submarine stage?) have 3 parts like that. There's the initial location, then a part where everyone moves or travels somewhere while fighting, then a final location where the fight ends. The travelling portion of one of the stages has everyone running down an Indiana Jones-type dungeon corridor, trying to stay in front of a huge rolling boulder. Pretty cool actually. You can try to sneak in hits to your enemies as you try to stay in front of the boulder.

My favorite stage was the submarine stage. There are two subs, side-by-side, that periodically dive and resurface. There are plenty of dangerous things on the decks, such as various gunner's turrets you can hop into and use. When the sub you're standing on dives, you have to swim to the other sub quickly since you can't do most of your moves in swimming mode.

Gameplay
So how's the gameplay, you ask? It's just like Powerstone 1, but way more crazy and action packed. That is to say it's "fun" and easy to pick up, but totally lacking in depth. But hey, I don't think it's supposed to be deep. It's just a nice party game with fast action, lots of background interaction, and great graphics.

I've decided to write a strategy guide for Powerstone 2, but first, I'll reprint my Powerstone 1 strategy guide in its entirety below:

    How to Win at Powerstone 1
    1. Always jump over the enemy and press throw when you're directly above them. If they didn't jump, you'll do the double stomp (and get a gem) and if they did jump, you'll air throw them.
    2. If people do 1) to you a lot, then always hold a box and run away. If they jump towards you, stay back and throw the box when they're in the air, then get another box.
    3. Oh, and get the gems, obviously. "Unfair mode" is powerful.

    And now for How to Win at Powerstone 2

    1. Always run away from the action. No need to fight since the only thing that can happen is you getting hit. Best to let the others duke it out and kill each other for you.
    2. While you're running away, might as well pick a bunch of boxes and throw them from a safe distance, or use one of the zillions of weapons from a safe distance.
    3. While you're waiting around away from the action, open those treasure chests. They often have gems in them. You don't have to actually fight to collect gems.
    4. When you do get near the other characters on the screen, see my How to Win at Powerstone 1 strategy guide.

Powerstone 2's incentive structure is quite odd, actually. You don't gain much from actually fighting, but you risk getting hurt. This means the optimum thing to do is to avoid fighting. You certainly wouldn't guess this by watching random people play, though. There's always tons of action and conflict going on. I'm not sure what a match would feel like if all 4 players realized the true dangers of actually attacking.

Bottom Line
The bottom line is that Powerstone 2 is a great "fun" game. It's action packed, unique, colorful, well rendered (great graphics!), and has taken interactive stages to a new level. If you're looking for a "serious" or "tournament" game, you'll have to look elsewhere. In fact, if you even know enough to get to shoryuken.com, you probably won't like Powerstone 2. If you ever have your non-shoryuken.com friends over and are looking for some crazy 4 player action on your Dreamcast, though, Powerstone 2 (and Chu Chu Rocket!) should be a big hit.

--David Sirlin