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Release Date: September 21, 2004
Developers: Digital Fiction
Publishers: Atari
Platforms: PS2
Genre: Fighting
Players: 1-2
Rating:12+

Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament is a video game for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) home game console. Based on the popular manga and anime series YuYu Hakusho created by Yoshihiro Togashi, Dark Tournament follows the protagonist Yusuke Urameshi, a rebellious teenager who dies and is brought back to life in order to serve as a Spirit Detective, solving cases involving apparitions and demons within the living world. The game covers the Dark Tournament story arc in which Yusuke and his allies are invited by a powerful demon named Toguro to participate in a deadly martial arts tournament.

The game had one of the basic fighting Setting/Camera angles where it would be side on, and you would only have your screens space to move. This was and to some people still is a very good setting, used in many games such as Tekken and a few DBZ games. The places where you fight were pretty good wasn't much to say about them, but most of them were very dark and evil kinda like a death colour which set the game quite well. Overall the game had a well thought out setting, the best in the series by far.

Well the games theme was fighting, and like most Manga fighting games, your character would fly in the air doing a number of different epic attacks. In the game there were 25 characters, each of which had there own unique fighting moves (Punches,Blocks,Combos,Kicks) also each character can unleash a special power once there bar fills up, the bar is filled up by attacking the other character enough then you can unleash his spirit from within, which i must say is epic. And yes quessing from the title the main gamemode is one massive tournament, split into 31 different chapters. But some chapters are tutorials to help you on the way, one of which was where you would have a fight between you and a master at fighting, which can be tricky if your not too good at blocking as this guy will beat you senseless. In some chapters you are accompanied by another fighter if someone is way more advanced than you, or your up against two people.

There were a few game modes on Yu Yu. Dark Tournament This is the main campaign, this will most likely take up most of your time on Yu Yu, this is where you go through the game, having many battles with people and as you progress the fighters you come against get stronger and harder to defeat which game the game more of a challenge so its not too easy to complete. Training Mode which is where you practice your fighting abilities and also a chance to try out all the characters to see what powers they have, which is what i used to learn an enemies weakness and destroy them with it. Arcade Mode This is where you choose what character you want to be, and who you want to fight, good to see who is a match for one another. Survival This is where you have one character and you come up against a bunch of characters one after another until you are finally defeated.

The graphics for this game weren't really that great, i never really liked the way people got knocked down, it just looked so cheap and effortless on what they have done, everything else the punching,kicking, special moves ect.. were all pretty good, there were no glitches throughout this game but its only a screen of distance, so it would be hard to have glitches.

The controls the same as any Manga fighting game, with the basic X,Square ect.. used for basic attacks like punching ect, but usually when i play these sorts of games, i just hold the controller on an angle and just mash loads of buttons in the hope for a massive combo, and it always worked, i recommend everyone to use this technique. Overall the controls were pretty easy to get the hang of, and very easy to rack up massive combos.

Overall this is probably the best manga game i have played, and yes i have played DBZ, although i haven't played the new dragon ball z ultimate tenkaichi, maybe ill give that a try soon. The gameplay for this was fantastic the setting was okay, im not really a fan of these kinds of setting but with gameplay and aplot this epic i forced myself to like it. The graphics could have done with some work and overall a pretty good game!