How does a fighting game set in the Dragon Ball Z universe stay faithful to the '90s series when it condenses a single confrontation into an action-packed few minutes? The answer is simple, remaining visually and aesthetically faithful whilst focusing on fun and rewarding combat. Dragon Ball FighterZ is already a strong contender for fighting game of the year.

The three on three fighting system has also been complimented here by a shared input system, with dynamic outcomes based on characters. What this means is DBFZ doesn’t require players to specifically learn different inputs in the way you would with, say, Ryu or Ken versus E. Honda or Blanka, as you would in Street Fighter. Instead, shared combo inputs, specials and more are all the same button presses, with different actions applicable to that character. So, essentially, your muscle (input) memory remains the same, what is different is what action each character does with the same input. This means the game follows the mantra of easy to learn, difficult to master.

Click Here to Read Our Full Dragon Ball FighterZ Review

Over the weekend and running up until 7pm tonight (Tuesday, January 16), we took part in the open beta for Dragon Ball FighterZ and had our asses handed to us, but it was all very, very fun. Check out our impressions.

Releasing on PC, PS4 and Xbox One January 26, Dragon Ball FighterZ is not just a flashy, gorgeous fighting game recreation of the Dragon Ball anime series, it's already proving much, much more. Here's a snippet from our impressions:

I spent a lot of time in the Tutorial portion of the game -- an area you physically need to walk to with your cute Chibi DBZ avatar because the game’s ‘menu’ is basically a little 3D village. If you’ve played Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, it’s a lot like that, only Chibi in its own right. Within the ‘menu’ hub, there were five locked out areas, with the aforementioned Tutorial section, a Replay area, Versus and a Ranking area. The Tutorial, thankfully, is lengthy and eases you into the game’s actual complexity slowly enough that by the time you’re attempting to summon Shenron, you don’t realise just how far you’ve come.

Controls and attacks are more Street Fighter-like than any other fighting games, but there are specific DBZ mechanics that work super well and helps give the game its own flavour and strategy. The aforementioned summoning of Shenron, for example, requires seven Dragon Balls collected throughout a fight based on combo numbers and a few other variables. Once you’ve collected them, you just need to land a perfect X or Square Super (basically just hitting X or Square and landing enough consecutive hits to pull off the Super), and the famous dragon appears to give you an over-the-top hand -- you can revive an ally, restore your health, gain the ultimate power of even become immortal (for a limited time).

Click here for our full Dragon Ball FighterZ impressions.

As we generally start the year 2018 in gaming off, Bandai Namco has helped us out with some news overnight that their forthcoming -- and hotly anticipated -- fighting game, Dragon Ball FighterZ, will see beta access this month, as well as sharing new information on more characters joining the game's fighter roster.

Coming to both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, the beta dates are from January 14, 7pm AEST through to January 16, 7pm AEST. Early access to the game starts from January 13, 7pm AEST so you can get right into the over-the-top action of this slick looking fighter when 7pm rolls around on Sunday.

Moreover, Beerus, Hit and Goku Black Super Saiyan Rosé have been added to the roster. We also have two new trailer featuring Goku and Vegeta embedded below. The game releases later this month (January 26) on PC (Steam), PS4 and Xbox One. Check out more on Dragon Ball FighterZ game page.