I know it sounds a bit cliché, but fans of Atari's PS2 Dragon Ball titles could be in for their best game yet. Announced today via an exclusive hands-on playtest with IGN (in other words, me), Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi is headed for North America this November. Known as Dragon Ball Z Sparking! in Japan and developed by the Fire Pro team at Spike, Tenkaichi aims to take everything that made the first three Budokai titles so popular and improve on them in every way. Rather than focus on a particular saga as the previous games did, for instance, Tenkaichi retells almost the entire DBZ story from scratch. Beginning with the arrival of Raditz in the Saiyan Saga and ending with the Goku's last journey in the Kid Buu episodes, Budokai should now hit every major plot point in the series' history. The only real question is just how much content from each saga will be in the game when it's finished (because Atari itself doesn't even know yet since Spike and Bandai are still finalizing the plotline at press time). I guess that means you'll just have to wait until later on to find out of Vegeta's first Super Saiyan transformation and subsequent humiliation of the androids make it in. Speaking of Vegeta, you can expect to see him in the lineup along with more than 60 other combatants -- the most ever in any Dragon Ball Z game. In fact, just about every character you can think of has made the final cut for Tenkaichi with some of them being a little less traditional than expected. The entire Ginyu Force (yes, including Guldo), all the Androids, all the Saiyans, every bad guy, and plenty of other surprises (giant monkey anyone?) will join up returning favorites like Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, Frieza, and Ginyu so that you can recreate all your favorite battles. To make each and every one of these 60-plus characters as close to their anime counterparts as possible, Spike has also gone and built a brand new engine from scratch instead of expanding on the existing engine used by Dimps for the last three games. The result is pretty impressive too, as the high-polygon models and pseudo-cel shaded style really adds a lot to the presentation. And unlike previous DBZ titles, Tenkaichi has a much wider variety of animations and idle poses than before. Of particular note are the special effects and super moves, which have been ripped right out of the television show. Needless to say, if you liked the super-cinematic staging of the dragon rushes and ultimate attacks in Budokai 3 you'll love these too. In terms of gameplay, I only had the chance to sample the eight characters that will be available to show-goers at E3 in a couple of weeks (Perfect Cell, Kid Buu, Super Saiyan Goku, Janemba, SS Vegeta, Piccolo, SS Gohan, and Frieza). The surprising thing about the way these guys played, though, is that they're near-identical to the mechanics found in Dimps' previous titles in just about every sense. The speed, physics, and movesets are pretty much the same here as they were in Budokai 3, but because of the free-roaming environments (there are no more ring outs), the control mapping and character abilities have been altered. R1 and R2, for example, are no longer used for transformations and throwing opponents. Now, that pair of buttons is used for the much more important task of up and down mid-air flight controls. Yes, that's right; your character no longer has to be launched into the sky by an attack in order to fly. Now all you have to do is hold down R1 and ascend into the heavens for a little mortal combat. The free-roaming flight changes strategies too, as now it's entirely possible to play a cat and mouse game to prolong battles and use the environment to your advantage. And yes, the backgrounds are completely destructible. The rest of the controls aren't as familiar either. The X button now commands dash and special arts instead of the previously-set guard (which itself is now the circle button), and Triangle has been changed from kick to Energy Wave. L1 centers the camera (which is very useful by the way), and L2 doubles as both the super charge and a modifier for attack combos. The amazing thing is that as different from the previous control scheme that this setup provides, it still feels like nothing has changed at all; In a nutshell, Budokai 4 basically plays like Budokai 3 had it been running on the Virtual On engine. Unfortunately the E3 build of the game is still undergoing a lot of balancing issues, so the AI of every opponent I faced created merciless no-death bastards. These guys were seriously tough too, with more combos in a single flurry than I've seen in the series provide before. On my side of things combos were pretty easy to pull of, and were a little more shallow than in Budokai 3. That is, until I discovered how useful the L-Trigger modifier was and that changed everything. Fans of the last effort needn't worry -- this is still a pretty deep game. Speaking of deep, Tenkaichi offers quite a bit in terms of replayablity. Though the complete feature set hasn't been finalized yet, Budokai will definitely feature a ten-attribute customization system similar to what's been available before (not to mention three different super moves per character, two-player split-screen action, and branching story points that allow users to explore interesting questions like "What if Frieza beat Goku?"). And as I mentioned earlier, the stages are completely destructible too, with things like boulders, buildings, and other such obstacles left to your vicious mercy. As for the stages themselves, there are a total of eight currently planned, with the Cell Games Complex, Craggy Place of Earth, and Planet Namek already confirmed. Unfortunately the E3 build didn't allow us to explore all of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi's options, but there's still plenty of time left to check them out. Besides with modes called Ultimate Battle, Dragon Capsule, and Evolution Z, the game is just begging for some future exposure. We'll be back said exposure around E3 time -- including impressions of how the underwater (yes I said underwater) battle physics work, and how some of the other characters specifically play in comparison to their Budokai 3 versions. In the meantime, click on our media page below for the latest screenshots and movies taken from the U.S. version. Source: IGN