The Bouncer - ProJared

laughs [Laughter] [Music] the bouncer this was Square's first game on the PlayStation 2. it was made for the PlayStation 2 launch and I say launch but ended up coming like a few months later but whatever close enough everyone was so on board with anything that square made thanks to all of their incredible RPGs they made on the PlayStation one that when the PS2 came out squares got a game for it oh yeah we had to have it I never actually played this one until just now and oh my God I am so glad I did every time you boot up the game it starts with the usual Sizzle reel of cut scenes from the game in a nonsensical fashion to inspire excitement of the things to come which naturally you press start to immediately skip which brings up the title screen and the bouncer that voice line is hilarious the delivery the seriousness trying to make it sound cool Flawless beginning the story mode starts off with an elaborate cutscene that goes on for way longer than it ever should a news report goes on and on about a revolutionary new solar generator satellite being launched into space by the Mikado Corporation while a woman in hotel room responds to a tweet she disagrees with the news report then goes on to explain in detail of how the satellite works this goes on for two solid minutes a reminder that this is a beat em Up game a genre with a plot is nothing more but an excuse to set you up to repeatedly punch people in the face then it's a helicopter flying over the city saying they found the Target and it deploys some dude to fall and land head first into some kids room this is funny whatever sense of Health importance this game has is now gone I cannot see how this could get any more oh my God this whole game is going to be a delight we see the Target that they are after a young girl whose hair wasn't anime enough so she dressed like a banana she runs up to a bar where she greets the bouncer thus we meet our three main Heroes volt KO and seon volt does indeed have horns on his head my man Co is tedded up like he's a Game Boy Advance SP and the game designer said we have Sora at home then the leather daddy ninjas break in because they're after the girl Dominique this is the major point of the game all three bouncers are playable at any level and there are multiple endings depending on who you play the most as and in certain areas I figured I'd start with seon since he's supposed to be the main character being on the cover and all what the hell is all awful look at everyone's stats there is empirical evidence of how bad he is stat wise and as we'll see with his personality he sucks the most speaking of personality seon is the edgy one that is really boring and uninteresting volt is the big Gruff one that can handle himself in a fight and Co is the Plucky comedic one and this game has three fours of the cast of Final Fantasy XV I know what you're thinking why does everyone look like this the clown shoes the zippers the oversized chains whatever the hell is going on with this hair let me just rewind back to the opening credits for a second and there it is ah who am I kidding I am just super jealous of that hair and I don't want to lose what's left of mine which means naturally that this video is sponsored by keeps keeps is the number one hair restoration at home delivery service for men two out of every three men will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 rather than panicking about how to restore it the secret is to keep what you already have prevention is key keeps will get a licensed medical provider to examine your situation online and recommend the best treatment plan for you that's what I I did and it was actually really easy all I had to do was take a photo of the front of my hair and of the top and I sent that in by that afternoon they had already contacted me back and got me set up with the best treatment plan for myself keeps is FDA approved and much cheaper than any store shelf brand most men see results as early as four months from starting go to keeps.com Pro Jared to get 50 off your first order that's keps.com Pro Jared or click the link in the description down below and get yourself started today and once again thank you to keeps for sponsoring this video so this is the gameplay it's a beat em up Punch Kick and hit dudes until their health bar reaches zero every single button on the controller is an attack low mid High and a jump attack you can press them in certain orders to do special combo attacks here's the thing with the controls though they're kinda ass for one movement is way too restrictive whoever you play as will automatically lock on of Swords to the nearest person to them making your movement sluggish and against your will as sometimes you'll try to just get away from everyone only to stop and crab step at a dude like I said you do have combo attacks but executing them is much easier said than done if you look at the manual it displays some basic combos for each character take C on here his basic combo is mid mid mid okay easy enough square square square but if you look closer you'll notice the manual shows the mid button in different sizes that's because how hard you press the attack button matters not many people realize this but one of the features of the dual shock 2 controller was the fact that it had pressure sensitive buttons that means some games could do different effects depending if you lightly press a button or if you press it really hard not a whole lot of games actually use this for anything one of the few examples I can think of is in like Metal Gear Solid 2 if you press it lightly you hold your gun up and if you press it hard you pull the trigger or you can like adjust how hard you're leaning in first person mode the bouncer uses this feature for fighting it's completely counter-intuitive I get to the PS2 which all new and shiny but this is so unnecessary imagine try to input any number of buttons in Rapid succession but also trying to differentiate between a light or a hard press using just your thumb it's not as easy as you'd think this resulted in me dropping combos frequently or outright doing incorrect attacks because it's such a finicky system it gets worse though think about combo attacks work in almost any other video game Devil May Cry Street Fighter God of War hell even just final fight there's a responsiveness in timing that is perfect in all of those games you press attack when you connect you press attack again to follow up and continue the combo it's that simple not so with the bouncer instead you have to input the entire attack string immediately otherwise it won't work that means in order to do the simple three attack combo before the first punch even lands you have to enter all three button presses and be committed to doing all three attacks before you even know if your attack lands or not enemy blocks too bad you already made your choice completely miss everyone to bad You're Gonna Keep swinging away at nothing and there is no way to cancel out of these animations once you start the combo string you've already put a ring on it whether you wanted to or not now combine that kind of forced animation commitment with trying to not mess up the pressure sensitive buttons and I'm starting to wonder why there's four attack buttons we're not even like trying to use just one of them anyway it's the very first fight of the game and I Die game over this is where I learned that this game does not have a continue screen there is not an option to load from your last save right away every single game over results in the game being reset thus every time you die you go back to the intro cinematic which you have to skip only to be once again greeted with the bouncer this isn't a difficult game by any stretch of the imagination but you will die due to cheapness or the sluggish controls so you'll be hearing the title of the game shouted at you several times on every playthrough second attempt I managed to win in the main BDSM ninja captures Dominique and escapes volt points out that these guys are from the same Corporation launching that satellite thing thing Co makes a phone call to his secret contact on how to go after them and Dollar Store Sora provides nothing to the team Co mentions a train is heading straight to the Corporation Headquarters after talking to his mysterious contact so they head toward the train station only to be stopped by some more dudes which is fine it's a beat-em-up pretty standard fare but after winning the cutscene shows that there's been a panther watching them the entire time recognize that black panther no whatever you think this Game's plot is going to be you're wrong in between each stage You Can level up yeah so that was the other big selling point of the bouncer it wasn't just a beat em up it's a beat em up RPG it's why every character has stats that they can improve and it's why they all look like well that you earn points as you defeat enemies letting you spend them to improve your health attack and block power or spend them to unlock additional special moves here's the thing with getting those points though you only earn them if you land the finishing blow if any of the NPCs kill them you get nothing if you don't get enough points to level up you're pretty much screwed so this means in every battle you're struggling against wonky movement awkward combo inputs and your own friggin teammates to make sure they don't kill steel that said you can also work with your teammates to a degree during fights you can hear one of your allies signal by whistling or taunting if you press R2 as they do that you execute a trinity attack where all three Heroes just wreck one dude it's fancy looking it's devastating it's a satisfy buying payoff and the Damage it deals is not worth it good God I'm way better off just flailing at them with random button presses speaking of flailing surely you've noticed that this game has ragdoll physics honestly it makes a lot of the fights really really funny knocking down enemies is always good for a laugh but it's even funnier when it happens to a total wiener like seon sometimes you do the splits in the air sometimes you end up face down ass up and getting slapped around again the bouncer of course there is an issue with this as well the game does have a Juggle option of sorts as you can hit an enemy knocked up for extra damage you can also knock enemies into each other for a bit of crowd control and damage enemies can also knock you or your allies into each other irritatingly often in most battles I did my best to get away from everyone else just to make sure I'm not getting slapped around finally making it to the train flailing our limbs at dudes until they stop moving we come up to our very first boss fight against this lady who is dressed like this Co minutes earlier oh man we're gonna freeze out here so nice to see you again agenda is that you volt oh vote wow I didn't see you back there so yeah these two have a history of some sort which is very mysterious and also intriguing it's hard to take her seriously when her name is Knuckles my name's Echidna sorry that's what I meant boss fights play out like any other battle only they have way more health and way better attacks which on top of this very narrow train just means little room to maneuver as we all get ragdolled around the only other thing to note is that the bosses are worth way more bouncer points but just like any other enemy if someone else gets the last hit you get zero of it you have to last hit the boss to make sure you're getting enough upgrades throughout the game also in this boss fight alone I died three times after finally defeating her Echidna says screw this and Yeats herself off of the train just like this into the ocean while it's winter then a gunship shows up shoots the hell out of the train for whatever reason disabling the brakes on the train while it's carrying Rocket Fuel it's going to explode when it collides who is this why are they shooting it's carrying Rocket Fuel how is this helping then we have this inexplicable gameplay section where you have to find a card key to decouple the cargo load which gives you approximately seven seconds to look at three separate boxes in the single train car no matter what the card is always in the last box this is the only part in the entire game that involves any kind of environmental exploration and it lasts less than a minute I'd call it padding but it's shorter than an average Tick Tock video I find the card They leap from the train and now we're in the enemy base this is the only part of the game where you're in long extended hallways with branching Pathways and multiple groups of enemies and it's empty just long hallways with nothing in them but this is one of the few times where I actually get to play for more than a single two minute fight because that's how the entire game plays out cutscene that lasts like five minutes fight for one minute level up screen cut scene fight level up cutscene fight level up cutscene fight it's like any attempt to actually be able to play the game is interrupted by its own self-defeating desire to tell a story that's as in-depth as a sophomore's first ever creative writing class project you know what I mean by that every single character is somehow connected to each other with everyone having some kind of backstory with them nobody is a character but rather some kind of expository tool to prop up the others every single detail is over explained it's like a student thought they were making an incredibly well written expansive engaging story just by making sure everything has a proper noun attached to it these aren't just Special Forces or the cops they're from Lucas whatever that stands for they don't work at a bar they're in a bar called fate do you get it and that bar isn't just in the city somewhere they live on dog Street and suddenly this kid's shirt in Kingdom Hearts 2 finally makes sense to you it's so far up its own ass about its own lore that even the load screens have brief bits of story in them the downside being that they're load screens so you have to read many lines of text in about 1.5 seconds there's just not enough time to read the whole thing at every load screen but when you can parse the words quickly enough oh my are they a treat 11 years ago giving up already no I'm just hungry can't fight on an empty stomach you're persistent I'll give you that what do I do next jump off this Cliff I know we all like to make fun of other Square RPGs for being so cutscene heavy that you basically watch more than you play but I've honestly never ever had it be so egregiously accurate as I have while playing the bouncer in fact I counted I added up the total play time of every successful level I played to the total run time of every cutscene in a playthrough there was 32 minutes and 23 seconds of actual gameplay compared to one hour two minutes and 17 seconds of cut scenes the trio fight their way through and steal a flying patrol platform thing which they immediately crash into a park that's in the corporation grounds I guess they get spotted and the leather ninjas narrow to run in but they also do this the main ninja guy mugetsu caused full tryhard mode which you can tell because he puts his goggles down here we have the advantage you don't stand a chance you will never get the girl back after beating them up some more the team finds a giant glass Dome where they find an unconscious Dominic but also there is another woman in an elegant gown playing a melancholic tune on the piano she brings a great sense of poise and dignity to the story and oh oh what excuse me freaking what she's also the panther the bouncer this is the main villain by the way his name is duragon and it turns out Dominique is his sister so he's finally kidnapped her back after she ran away and dressed her in this I guess and this old guy is Wong his master who was also seon's Master which is why he's shocked when duragon suddenly kills him there's a flashback of young duragon trying to help Dominique who is very very sick and he carries her to the hospital only for this gigantic hospital to say sorry our one doctor isn't in right now try a different hospital clearance Isle Sora inexplicably makes his way inside and there's a fight against duragon but also the panther is they're not white guys after defeating them he makes everyone fall into a pit everyone gets separated so there's finally some time for seon to fight tons of enemies on his own only now there's dumb little robots that also get in the way during this section digivolved Sora finds a computer and it's filled with more Exposition dumps it includes how they made guard dogs how the ninja guys exist through robotomy surgery basically how everything is robots are made to be part robot but also in all of this is a file on someone named caldia Orchid who seon recognizes and has flashbacks of this was his girlfriend or something from a few years ago but according to a load screen everyone thought she died in an explosion but oh god oh that smile is horrifying 20 years anyway the file mentions how the surgery has aged her 10 years and now Dollar Store Renault is definitely the panther lady who see who see us in the very next room with the same strategy as fighting the computer in Mortal Kombat 1. also she can walk through walls I guess Dominique is napping on the couch in the very next room but guess who's back again and there's a full group of Special Forces with him but don't worry volt appears and one of those ninjas was Co in Disguise just in time for another boss battle versus mugetsu after beating him up again he just kind of manages as everyone finally gets reunited quickly making their escape Co and Vault act as distraction so that seon can get his girlfriend who is still in high school out of the building and now it's an escort Mission with Dominic being quite possibly one of the dumbest companions I've seen okay first off there's enemy robots now because why not the weird part about them is that they'll attack sure but if you hit them at any point in time they'll just kind of freeze up they don't react or recoil they just stop like they forgot to animate it so the robots just set every single time they're hit so it doesn't matter what attack you use so long as it's fast enough to interrupt their dumb loader bot attacks I can just roundhouse kicks for days and be okay except Dominique is there she doesn't fight she doesn't Dodge she doesn't get out of the way in fact she tries to stand as close to you as possible oftentimes getting in the way of your own attacks and she has her own health bar which is very small but that won't stop her from standing in the worst place as possible and get absolutely pummeled for it I got more game overs here because of Dominique and you have to run through five floors of robots and dudes while making sure she doesn't get hit at all but then at the end there's another robot dude who uses his extendy grabby hand to snag Dominique and squeeze her so hard she passes out it's just enough time for the return of Vault and Co who I guess was just right over there the whole time it's another boss fight that isn't very remarkable upon defeating him though dozens more show up and they're basically screwed in desperation Dominique shreves hey remember that solar satellite thing that was mentioned at the very beginning of the game it abruptly activates which causes Dominique to activate because she's actually been a robot this whole time and she goes sicko mode obliterating every single robot boss with the biggest chunk of anyone I've ever seen kills everyone and then passes out while her Motors smoke the bouncer volt who admits he used to work for this evil Mikado Corporation explains how Dominique is actually the younger sister of duragon but she died a long time ago so duragon made a robot copy of her but this robot sister he made is also for some reason the main battery for his solar satellite so he needs everyone to rocket ship her up into space need I remind you this game was about three bouncers working at a bar then leather daddy ninja shows up once again steals Dominique away again and takes her to space and then Echidna comes back because why not we need another boss fight I shall become number one once I defeat all of you good God why did her boobs jiggle that much just from pointing if I finally got your attention from your other screen because you heard me say the word boobs and jiggle you now have to like this video And subscribe to my channel the bounce the group hops onto one of those patrolling platform things from earlier to chase after the rocket ship while the same Squad of Fighters that shot the train also shoots the rocket but before they can make it on mugetsu appears one last time for yet another boss fight now he'll use all of his ultimate attacks which is him making himself ripped like a goddamned Beyblade once defeated he gets hit off the floating platform and falls into the engine exhaust of the rocket ship it gets absolutely annihilated meanwhile back on the ship duragon connects his robot battery sister all up and reveals his master plan to power the satellite to shoot lasers back on earth and its golden Knight the satellite is Goldeneye anyway the first thing he blasts is the hospital that couldn't save his sister originally which I don't feel the need to point out the hypocrisy here but there you go Sora who is left in the microwave too long tries to break into the cockpit but gets stopped by the panther woman again which means we gotta beat her up and by beat her up I mean volt body slams her and then a kick her in the head repeatedly afterwards she laments how Xeon doesn't recognize her now that she's so much older than him 10 years you're only 10 years older now and you still look exactly the same and then out of nowhere duragon scorpion Spears are through the chest from the other room so then she dies I guess duragon does the whole evil villain monologue thing explaining how people actually want to be controlled and blah blah blah whatever boss fight time he's a tough fight because he has a lot of health and does a lot of damage and blocks far more often so it's best to balance your attacks with using your friends as distractions he is also the final boss so he absolutely has a second phase so now duragon shows us his true form he's wearing overalls and oh your health does not refill between these last fights uh yep I'm dead it actually takes me several more attempts at this boss fight after finally displaying my flailing superiority duragon Falls and Dominique is rescued her robot brain bits inform everyone that they can escape the collision by using the back of their ship allowing them to get back to the Earth before they crash into the incoming jpeg duragon however not so lucky even after all of these explosions he dies floating in space still looking as hot as possible finally back home things are back to normal Sora that I bought from wish.com begins his shift Dominique shows up and is gleeful that he is now wearing the pendant that she got from at the beginning of the game and credits you didn't think we were done did you there's still two more stories to play through the Bounty remember you can choose who to play as at every single fight doing so changes the Viewpoint of the scene to them garnering different perspectives and often new bits of story information that you didn't get before it's an admittedly cool idea and a good way to reward replayability if only more was done with it it doesn't drastically alter the storyline or plot or reward you with meaningful chunks of information all the broad Strokes are the same they also have slightly different play Styles volt hits way harder at the start and most of his moves are very grappling and wrestling based Co is supposed to be Taekwondo but it isn't so different that he feels like a new character it has the same issue as when I was playing as seon they all have these new moves I could unlock but what's the point when they're too difficult to connect or not worth the payoff why learn all these ridiculous combos with KO when spamming his uppercut to juggle enemies is just way easier and better the worst part though is that all the upgrades you've got for the other characters stick which would be fine and good so that they aren't so useless until you remember that you only get bouncer points to spend when you're the one who gets the last hit and suddenly you have team members who do way more damage than you they also have their own load screen backstories it's how we learn more of Volt's relationship with Echidna how they used to work together at the Mikado group and that it's also against Volt's principles to raise a hand against a woman the reason that volt has horns on his face is that they are piercings to cover up his scars from when he got shot in the head twice I guess and survived this time around I didn't find the card key on the train to make it crash into the building which plays out mostly the same only now while making your way through the vast empty hallways you have to run at the camera and avoid shutters being closed down not once not twice but five times volt does provide some very valuable contacts as to this whole part night vision goggles got it it all makes sense now at that part where everyone gets separated bolt escapes from restraints and has a really mundane level of fighting through enemies if he escorts Dominique she's just as obstructive as before and after defeating Echidna the second time there's an extended cutscene where she admits more of her wrongdoings but also these two definitely just want a bang if you use Vault or code to defeat kaldia right before the last boss xion doesn't get that whole scene with her and is just like yeah she's dead Let's Go Gang the ending plays out pretty much the same until they're all back at the bar where volt points out to seon hey your girlfriend's a robot we're gonna get old and she's always going to look 15 and that's really weird but hey Echidna shows up to be a bouncer with bolt meanwhile in Ko's story way more context is provided that phone call he makes right at the beginning well now we get to hear all of it remember the lady in the opening cinematic that we never see the face of the same one that flies the ship and lights up the train and we still don't see her face well she's a contact of coke because according to his load screen lore he's actually a special agent undercover watching Dominique and he got these stupid tribal tats to help hide his identity who cares most of his extra dialogue is all internal monologues everywhere that's more lightheart equipped than anything substantial however KO has a major gameplay section that is completely unlike any other part of the game when all three gets separated KO goes undercover for a stealth section this Stealth gameplay though is a Simon Says section where you have to match whatever proposed the enemy does with you these poses are named things like old man in thought lonely Warrior unparalleled friendship and a lady's temptation is it working if you don't do it correctly it breaks out into a fight the thing is though it's actually better to fail because you need all those bouncer points to make sure code doesn't suck ass by the end matching the poses is actually really easy to do anyway you have plenty of time to read and react and got it identify yourself damn it all the fighters that show up to shoot down the rocket ship are also thanks to co and his contact Leanne who finally got a million subscribers so she gives us a face reveal the rest of code's playthrough is pretty much the same through the final duragon fight who goes down to his overalls again but because it's my third playthrough duragon has a third form behold unclasped overalls this extra fight plays out exactly like the rest with me spamming the uppercut attack to Juggalo I guess this explains why he was topless in his overly sexy space death scene CO's ending back at the bar has him being his same stupid co-self he tells his police force he basically wants to keep being a bouncer because friendship or whatever but surprise he has an extra boss fight the others don't KO goes to the Central Plaza for a final showdown with Leanne why I don't really know but there it is it's super anticlimactic and ruins any semblance of pacing the story had then Leanne just leaves wink credits okay I skipped over this earlier but the credits are amazing it plays an original song called love is a gift and it's sung by renowned R B singer Shanice Wilson it is so perfectly year 2000 and I kind of love it it's the kind of song that if I were like 16 years old and hearing it I would think oh man this song is so beautiful and deep I can't wait to burn it onto a CD and play it for the girl I have a crush on in my mom's Minivan and at the end of the credits it shows Dominique standing at a grave whose grave is she standing at is it her brother duragon her parents she never got to meet or since she's wearing seon's pendant that she gave him at the beginning is this centuries into the future where everyone has died of old age except for her because she's a robot see on Dead full dead go dead me dead and then she just finds a dog it may sound like I don't like this game that's not true it's not good by any means but oh my god did I have an amazing time playing it I was laughing out loud so much I would not call it a classic by any stretch of the imagination and I don't even think was really all that good for the time but I am so glad I played it now usually at this point in the video I have some sort of like final joke as a stinger right before the end slate but I actually I don't have one this time so sorry about [Music]

Channel: ProJared

Views: 307,614

Keywords: projared, projared controversy, projared drama, squaresoft, squaresoft the bouncer, squaresoft ps2 games, ps2 rpgs, the bouncer, the bouncer ps2, playstation 2 rpgs, obscure ps2 rpgs, playstation 2 rpgs list, sion, the bouncer sora, kindgom hearts, tetsuya nomura

Id: HEsFDAZtMNs

Length: 29min 32sec (1772 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 12 2022