Forget the Dragon Ball fantasies of being Goku and blasting Cell out of the sky. Bandai Namco just announced Dragon Ball: The Breakers, an upcoming asymmetrical online multiplayer game where you can either be Cell, or be one of seven people trying to run the heck away from his particular brand of chaos.
You can check out an announcement trailer below:
Dragon Ball: The Breakers puts you in the oversized boots of either a Raider — Cell, Buu, or Frieza — or one of seven "survivors" who must cooperate to try and escape the temporal anomaly they're stuck in before the raider blasts them into oblivion.
Aside from just running around and hiding, survivors can work on customizable skill trees, use items like weapons and grappling hooks, and hop in vehicles to eventually escape via a Super Time machine. The trailer shows off a number of examples of gameplay, including rocket launchers and other gun-like weapons, and Oolong shapeshifting into a potted plant to hide from Cell.
The Breakers is a part of the Dragon Ball Xenoverse universe, and will include some sort of tie-in to save data from Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for those who have it.
It's currently planned for release on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC in 2022, and will of course also be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. A closed beta test is planned for PC, with more details coming at a later date.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers doesn't look quite like anything we've seen before from the Dragon Ball universe, as a co-op survival game rather than the numerous fighting games. But we liked Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2's authenticity and depth when we reviewed it back in 2016, so hopefully The Breakers is able to tap into the best of those elements as well.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.