This is what we know. 

FACT: It's coming out on the PS2 on July the 1st in America.

FACT: All the characters from BRII are still in, and two new ones have arrived.

FACT: It's one of the fastest beat-'em-ups about, running at 60fps.

FACT: You get two beast drives per character.

FACT: You can now run around the ring in any direction.

FACT: Not only can you break the walls, but the floor, too.

FACT: The move system remains the same.

FACT: It looks fantastic.

Seriously, kids, it looks like it's going to be great. Early reports from the states and Japan are in, and apparently it's looking pretty good.

So what else can we tell you? Well, everything you wanted to know.

There are few (if any) games available that let you control a Gene Simmons-tongued dement in an aloha shirt who turns into a giant chameleon in order to beat hell out of his opponents. Now that, as I like to say, is entertainment. 

Busuzima (the aforementioned) joins all the rest of Bloody Roar 2's characters, as well as Xion the Unborn, in the initial cast of Bloody Roar 3 -- the Iron Mole is evidently hidden. Any one of them is a ticket to a good time, though. Tekken has depth, while Dead or Alive has its speed and massive arenas, but Bloody Roar 3 is more fun at times than either. The Tekken-style combos are lengthy, plentiful, and fairly easy to pull off, giving the game a fast back-and-forth pace. Those attacks are accompanied by a few Street Fighter style commands for each character (mainly half- and quarter-circles), a few basic throws using the triangle button, and two Beast Drive special attacks apiece, performed with forward and backward versions of the SFIII two-scoops motion. 

The special attacks are the graphical high point of the game -- their animation is fluid and absurdly fast, while the lighting and explosion effects are beautiful. Some include a touch of the gruesome (Xion impales enemies on his prehensile antennae) while others are just cute (Uriko ping-pongs off the arena walls with her opponent and winds up a little dizzy afterward).

You have to change to your beast form in order to use your special attacks, which is a nice little graphical prelude to the coming chaos. While the ordinary character models may not be that impressive, the beast alters look great. The hulking Stun has massive horns, armor plates, and animating transparent wings. We would also be remiss if we didn't mention Jenny's lovely bat wings, which are nearly all she's wearing after her beast transformation. Ahem... Shenlong and Marvel have some nice striped and spotted textures for their feline fur, and Yugo's werewolf model makes a great lead character. 

There's less refinement in the basic character models and stage backgrounds than we've seen in games like DOA2 Hardcore, though. Everything has just a touch of the dreaded aliasing, although there's no interlace flicker that I can see. The Bounce is in effect, for which we thank Eighting profusely, but other than that the idle animations are relatively bland, and some of the attack animations seem a little limited. There are also some unpleasantly obvious spots of poor collision detection in throws and win poses, an issue which was handled so well in DOA2. 

The arenas include fully polygonal constructions in the backgrounds, and some very large animating elements. A city stage has el trains running by, and a ring set up on an aircraft carrier's deck elevator includes fighters taxiing and taking off in the background. The level of detail and sense of scale doesn't quite compare to what Team Ninja has achieved, though. You still feel like you're in a fixed ring with scenery surrounding it, as opposed to DOA2's remarkable sense of immersion in the environment. To add a touch of environmental interactivity, though, Eighting has drawn a few tricks from the Fighting Vipers playbook -- several stages include walls you can blast an opponent through, and one even has a collapsing floor to fall through. 

It helps that 3D movement has come back to the series, with the addition of an 8-way run system halfway in between Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur. A quick down-down or down-up will let you sidestep, and if you hold the D-pad down, you can transition from there into free movement around the ring -- great for outflanking a slower opponent. The countermove mechanics seem unchanged, however, which is making it easy for veterans (like DJ Ess) to hold their own against newer players who've just discovered the canned combos.

This is page BR3