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Sunday, July 25, 2010.
by Stacy Code
Deadliest Warrior, developed by Pipeworks, is an attempt to take the concept of Spike TV’s television show of the same name and translate it into a 3d fight game. Unfortunately, if you aren’t familiar with the TV show or have no interest in it, what you’re left with is the game itself, and the game itself fails on many levels - I don’t think I’d be amiss to call the game a flat-out failure. The television program, Deadliest Warrior, presents an interesting concept. Each week on the show two different types of warrior are selected from history and a speculative “what if” is explored - what if a Nazi S.S. soldier fought a Viet Cong? What if Jesse James fought Al Capone? It’s the sort of speculation that usually took place on the playground after school when you and your friends would argue over whether or not Spiderman could beat up Batman. The TV show studies the combatants, explains their history, studies the effects of their weapons and techniques and how they damage the human body, and then after consulting various experts and historians, flimsily ‘simulates’ the battle in computers and re-enacts it for the screen with actors. It’s sort of one part History Channel to two parts professional wrestling. The Deadliest Warrior game presents the same concept. A typical 3d fighter, you are given a selection of characters and square off against the CPU or another player. In the case of this game, you’re offered eight historial warriors from different eras - Apache, a Roman Centurion, medieval Knight, Ninja, Pirate, Samurai, Spartan, and Viking. Each fighter has a short, medium, and long range attack, and an assortment of special moves and combos. There’s a variety of environments to fight in - castle courtyard, Japanese garden, and so on. All of the typical ingredients are there for a typical fight game. And that’s where the game ends. Sadly, that’s all there is. Other than the cachet of the TV show title on the front of the game, there is nothing to make this a worthwhile fighter over another game. The production values are minimal - the character models are simple and generic (the knight is a very plain knight, the pirate looks like, well ... a pirate.) and you get the feeling you’re just playing a Halloween costume - they almost border on caricature. The animation is par, with some cool moves and swishes and a lot of decapitations and amputations - there’s more lopped-off limbs than all of George Lucas’ Star Wars movies put together. Textures are simple, there is no normal mapping, bump mapping, lighting effects, reflections... visually, the game feels very stripped down. It’s graphically inferior to even classic xbox fighters such as Kakuto Chojin whose technology is now nine years old. In lieu of music, there are environmental sounds - cicadas buzz in the Japanese garden, crickets chirp in the medieval courtyard - but the audio is minimal - a cacophony of generic grunts, groans, clanks, clangs, and a token line or two for each character to speak upon victory. A brief musical fanfare marks the end of a match, and a music loop plays over the opening menu. There isn't a cutscene or a cinema to be found at the opening of the game - it's pretty barren, and there's not so much as a text crawl to explain the premise of the show or why these fighters have come together. The real dealbreaker here is that I could get past an ugly game with little character if there was some depth or complexity to the fight mechanics, but they are unpolished, unbalanced, and crippled by an engine that will frequently freeze for about a sixteenth of a second in the middle of combat - enormously distracting and in the case of a 3d fighter, a total gamebreaker. Unless you’re a fan of the TV show, there’s simply no reason to show up for this one and even if you are a fan of the show, you’ll get over the glow of seeing the logo on your screen after about twenty minutes of playing this one. Instead, I’m going to suggest to you how the drudgery of household chores are more fun AND less expensive than The Deadliest Warrior. 1. Detail your car. Armorall, Turtle Wax and some rags won’t run you more than fifteen bucks. It’s nice to be outside right now. Put on your iPod, have some time in the sun and you’ll feel good about your clean car. 2. Wash your dishes. You know they’ve been stacking up while you’ve been playing games - go tackle them. A copy of AC/DC’s Back In Black (or the rock of your choice) will run you about twelve bucks and some Lemon Fresh Sunlight dish detergent certainly won’t run you more than two. You’ll rock to the beats and you’ll be able to steal snacks from a clean kitchen when you go back to your gaming. 3. Do your laundry. Whether you have your own facilities, the washing machine on your apartment complex floor, or you have to haul it to the local laundo, there’s no reason laundry should be a dull, wasted two hours of your day. A copy of a favorite book or magazine, some cheese, crackers, and fresh fruit won’t even break ten bucks, and not only will you be entertained, but you’ll be ABLE to entertain should you happen to meet someone at the laundromat! If you’ve got your own machines at home, do it anyway! It’s like a picnic in your back yard. Deadliest Warrior is, unfortunately, a game without a home. If you like a good fighter with some depth and complexity, it’s not the game for you. And if you’re just a casual player who likes the show and is excited to try a fight game that explores the same concept, you likely won’t last an hour through the lackluster production values. If there were a TV show where fight games were pitted against each other, Deadliest Warrior loses - Mortal Kombat kills it with “Flawless Victory”, Street Fighter kicks it out of the ring with “Perfect”, Soul Calibur runs it through on a blade with “Perfect”, Killer Instinct brutally shows it “No Mercy” - all the way back through gaming history. Overall: 3.7 / 10 Gameplay: 4.0 / 10 Visuals: 3.5 / 10 Sound: 4.0 / 10 | |||||||||
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