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horrors
of
conformism changed his
life. However, that is all briefly mentioned and no real reasoning
as to the how's and why's are given. Now, some might not expect
much of a story from a fighter, but considering how much story could
be pulled from the license, I don't think I'm out of line on this.
There is also no personality given to any of the other characters.
They are all of a varying shade of pale, some with facial hair,
and everyone fights in one of three styles: grappler, brawler, or
karate. Everyone talks about the greatness of Tyler and their dislike,
then begrudging respect for you. The different styles control as
one would expect, but the game has a hard time diverging from the
core set of moves, giving every fighter the feel of one of three
vanilla styles.
After beating a few guys through a handful of decent-looking, if
sparse, semi-interactive locales and hearing a disjointed story
about what is going on, the player is treated to a scene from the
movie. Don't get too excited; despite being rendered, it isn't impressive.
It is a bit grainy and the shininess that prevails on all the models
in the game, giving them a plastic-oily look, is toned down to a
near-death vibe for the ending.
After beating that, there is always the tutorial to fool around
in, which is unnecessary and unhelpful, or the arcade mode to check
out. The arcade mode is actually pretty interesting because it lets
the player create a character and put him through the wringer, with
each win earning money to either enhance one of their traits (strength,
endurance, speed, and technique) or spend the cash on repairing
injuries, like broken bones. This is not a THQ-style create-a-player
mode, mind you; it is really just a handful of body types, skin
tones, colors of pants, and picking one of the three previously
mentioned styles of fighting. If the player chooses not to use their
custom character, they can play as one of the handful of other characters,
with their movie endings, somewhat filling out the story, being
saved in a handy theater mode. But doing that will not allow them
to bulk up their character, which they will want to do for online
play. There are two types of custom characters, normal and hardcore,
with hardcore being able to be chosen for online play, and also
allows your player to sustain permanent damage via broken bones.
Bones are broken when the player takes too much damage and a throw
is done on them, with the resulting action leaving a limb limp or
a back broken. This encourages one of the niftiest aspects of the
game: tapping out. If you are taking too much damage, you can opt
to walk away with a bruised ego and a loss of whatever points were
on the line, which might be the better solution. Of course, none
of this really helps the fact that the game is not fun and there
are very few people playing this online.
When I play a bad game, I fight myself, trying to ignore the fact
that I'm spending my time on something that isn't worth it. But
sometimes I just get bowled over and my resistance fades quickly.
In the case of Fight Club, there are some interesting things
which kept me from being completely put off by the game within a
very short time. The ability to take a character online and use
points earned off- and on-line to enhance them is pretty cool. I
also liked how the fighting engine handled punching, at first. The
problems are not just a lack of character and variety, but a lack
of general polish. Aside from stiff animations, a quick glance at
the game may make one think it looks polished, but spending some
time with it reveals a few things. For one, it sounds like there
are just two songs throughout the game, save for the endings, with
one for the menu and one for the fighting. While there are more,
they certainly don't sound different. There is also the fact that
whenever a match is over, characters talk, but no words are heard;
their heads move, their arms move, their lips move, but nothing
comes out, which is actually very distracting. The control, much
like the fighting engine, seems to fall apart after the first few
punches are thrown. At first, the controls are fairly responsive,
and using a character's momentum against them (punching them in
the gut and hitting their body while it flinches closer to yours)
is actually handled really well. The game also feels visceral at
first, with a blood-splattering-on-the-camera gimmick punctuating
moves that send characters gasping for air and fidgeting on the
ground in pain. The sound effects, before they eventually get drowned
out by background noises, feel pretty satisfying, if a bit limited
in range, with the appropriate thuds and whacks that one would expect.
What's more, some of the moves look pretty cool, except the cheesy
x-ray view of when bones get broken, a la Romeo Must Die.
Then it all just goes downhill.
The response time of the controls begins to vary, giving the game
a very sluggish feel, and the fighting just comes off as random,
as if there is no defined hierarchy of moves. The rudimentary counter
system also comes across the same way, and the taunt feature (which
replenishes some health from minor blows) is also unbalanced, with
some characters taking around three times as long to do their animation
than others. Clocking in at about ten pages, the manual is also
poor, as it fails to tell the player how to do things that are required
of you during the game. Even the unlockables aren't very good; for
example, one such unlockable includes Fred Durst, who not only seemed
to lose about fifty pounds and gained rock-hard abs for the role,
but also made fellow writer Nick Stewart shiver at the realization
of just how unfit this game is to the material. The end result is
a game that seems mediocre on the outset, but ends up being far
worse.
Overall: 2.5/10
With poor production, a shoddy and limited engine, a story that
has almost nothing to do with the movie, and an almost non-existent
online base to fight against, Fight Club takes what few interesting
concepts it had, like taking a custom fighter through arcade mode
and online to gain points to level up different feats, and throws
them out the window. If you are a fan of the movie, you will not
like this; if you are a fan of the book you will not like this;
and if you are a fan of fighting games, you will not like this.
Even with games I am not overly fond of, I am still comfortable
with offering a recommendation to rent because they still have some
qualities that are worth checking out, but not here. There is just
so much else that is more worthwhile than Fight Club.
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