Tag Archives: Fighting

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Fight Night Round 3

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I’ve always enjoyed EA’s Fight Night series. The ‘Total Punch Control’ system was an instant hit (no pun intended) with fighting game fans and it was this feature of the series, even more so than the graphics that drew me and many other gamers in. Fight Night 2004 introduced us to this brand new and alternate style of control that successfully ended the reign of the ‘button masher’ and replaced luck with actual skill if you were to get the most out of the game.

Unfortunately it was light on in the Career Mode and this was addressed to some extent in the sequel, Fight Night Round 2 which added options to choose trainers, select intro music and lighting effects for your fighters ring entrances. More options in games are usually welcome, but these new features were mostly a matter of style over substance and resulted in little replay value for the game once complete. In my previous review I said the career mode took a bit of a step back. Unfortunately this is the case in the Xbox 360 version, so while we have a game that showcases some of the most amazing graphics ever seen in a sports game on any platform, is that enough to warrant the $100 + purchase price?

It has to be said, the graphics in the Xbox 360 version are amazing, I mean like ‘Holy Shit’ amazing. We’re always looking for that ‘WOW’ factor in new games and when you see the first knock down replay with your victims drool splurting out, the glazed look in his eyes and the skin of his cheeks rippling from the impact of your punch in super sexy slow motion you’d be forgiven if you climbed up onto your roof shouting “YES, next-gen is here!”… or something like that. The truth is that this version of Fight Night 3 looks absolutely amazing and the team at EA Sports have created the most lifelike characters outside a pre-rendered cut scene ever to grace a video game. Most of the time before a games release we’re shown trailers and screenshots that are rarely indicative of the final version, and we all know how damn annoying that is right? But this time around everything you’ve seen is exactly how good Fight Night 3 looks.

The artwork on the Fight Night boxers is so detailed that it’s possible to see every pore plus every bead of sweat on their bodies and in 720p on a nice sharp widescreen, giant television it’s amazing how great everything looks. The lighting is also extremely realistic with reflections and highlights glistening on the boxers’ sweaty skin and it’s also used effectively in each of the stadiums that your fights take place in. Throughout the bouts your fighter will also suffer cuts and bruises but the animations of the blood dripping down the faces aren’t really that smooth as I was expecting. It’s a small point but with the amazing detail packed in everywhere else it does stand out when you see it.

EA secured the rights to all things ESPN last year and this is one of the first rounds of EA Sports games to make use of the licence. Fight Night 3 sports a number of different game modes with the ESPN classic one being the newest addition to the series. Classic matches from the annals of boxing history are selectable so if you’ve ever wanted to relive Ali versus Frazier you’ll be in your element. To continue the fine form of the graphics, even the historical boxers such as Ali look the best that they ever have and once you retire your normal Career mode fighter, you can even go up against him.

The Career mode is where you will spend most of your time and creating your Boxer and building him in to a lean mean fighting machine is plenty of fun. The training modes aka mini-games return with the Combo Dummy, Heavy Bag and Weight Lifting all contributing in their own way to different areas of your fighters’ skills. The option to ‘auto-train’ is there if you’re in a hurry but the performance increase will be almost negligible at best so it pays to spend a bit of time going through them, and unfortunately, while something different to the bouts, repetition is the killer here as after signing a contract, training, fighting a match, signing a contract, training and fighting a match gets old fairly quickly and this is the biggest complaint I have about Fight Night 3. Except for fighting and training, there just isn’t much else to do.

Yes, I realise, it is a fighting game but the Career mode has no story as such and is just you taking your created fighter to the top. With more use of the ESPN licence, the ability to perhaps pick sponsors, take part in promotional events (at least some choices to make) and a little bit of narrative with some story moments between you and your rivals, Fight Night 3 would have even more interesting to actually play through and possibly helped to create more of a bond between you and your character. As it stands though, the excellent graphics keep drawing you back in and you probably won’t stop until you have all the Live Achievements and have retired at least one or two fighters.

If the Career mode does eventually get boring you’re able to jump online and punch on with your Live buddies in either ranked or non ranked matches. In a number of matches against Deathgod there was no lag and knocking the snot out of your mates, and then getting the snot knocked right back out of yourself is loads of fun, especially when those slow motion, skin rippling replays kick in with their over the top, bone crunching sound effects. With winter coming up Fight Night 3 will be one of those games dragged out on cold rainy days for plenty of online action because with the great graphics and the ‘Total Control’ system, smacking down your mates becomes even more enjoyable than ever before. The lack of lag was a nice surprise, especially after some negative experiences with other online fighting, and some other recent EA Sports games.

There are also a couple of new moves thrown in this year as well. The Flash KO has the ability to put your opponent into a daze giving you the opportunity to throw in a few quick punches and knock him down before he can react. It’s one of the longest punches to make so in return leaves your defences open but is pretty effective if you can pull it off. The other new move, the Stun Punch immediately puts your opponent on the defensive requiring only one more solid punch from you to put him down and forces him to block or parry while he regains his composure. They’re both effective moves, but even more so if used after a parry from yourself and the final training mode, Sparring, is the perfect spot to practice them. I think a couple of the matches that I’ve played online (against strangers) and been slaughtered in were due to being on the receiving end of these new moves so I can speak for how effective they can be when used properly.

The audio in Fight Night 3 does a good job in the fights with blows sounding full of bass and oomph. In the slow motion replays the impacts sound awfully painful, even (it must be said) a little over the top. The commentary gets repetitive but this is fairly indicative of most EA Sports games so while a slight let down, wasn’t unexpected. It reacts well to the onscreen action though so it does a great job in that area. The music is the standard hip-hop stuff that EA must have purchased in bulk a few years back and is still trying to use up. While it suits the game it’s a bit light on this time with only 12 music tracks included, but as it’s only on during the menus it’s not a real issue.

Final Thoughts and Score
This is the first EA Sports game for the Xbox 360 that we’ve reviewed so far. We’ve played a few of the rest (with reviews coming soon) and Fight Night 3 is easily the best looking out of the bunch. It shares a bit in common with other EA Sports Xbox 360 titles though being that it’s a bit light on in the features department which is a bit of a letdown, especially in the online modes. I’ve gone on about the graphics but it’s got to be mentioned again just to drive the point home that this is one damn sexy looking game. Everything is photo realistic and EA have really delivered the goods here, when you see it in motion it looks amazing.

The only complaints that can be levelled at Fight Night 3 are the points already raised. The Career mode needs to be built upon, especially with the heavy duty ESPN licence attached to the game. A bit of story telling wouldn’t go astray either, especially to help create a tighter bond between you and your self created on-screen character, but other than that, the amazing graphics and fighting engine hold everything together creating the best looking boxing game ever and a real showcase for the 360’s power.

Pros
Amazingly realistic looking fighers
Lag free online play
Fun training games
‘Total Control’ beats button mashing
Bone crunching sound effects

Cons
Career mode gets repetitive
Some more online modes wouldn’t hurt

90/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Fight Night Round 4

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It’s no secret that EA’s Fight Night revolutionised boxing games. Moving the control scheme away from the buttons to the control sticks was a genius move, and has allowed EA to pretty much dominate the genre since first coming out with it. However, with Fight Night Round 4, it’s apparent the franchise needs something special to continue being held in such high regard. It’s not that Fight Night Round 4 is bad in any way, it just lacks the punch (pardon the pun) of the previous entries.

All the good stuff of Fight Night Round 3 is here – the awesome graphics, improved with much more realistic levels of sweat, and fantastic lighting of rings and boxers; the great sound giving the visceral realism the game is renowned for a bigger impact; and the robust fighter creator which creates eerily similar facsimiles of those with XboxLive Cameras.

For the actual in-ring gameplay, the punching system has been revamped with a new physics engine, and each punch landed feels more solid and powerful than previous titles. Some punches have changed – the haymaker is now mapped to a button press and a hook movement with the joystick, which means players aren’t accidentally throwing them at opponents so much. Likewise, body punches are no longer modified by a button, but instead mapped to the normal punch controls, promoting their importance and use against opponents. Parrying has become a solid block, and there isn’t a momentary opening from blocking – you’ve literally have to fight for openings. Now more so than ever, you need to time your punches when in the ring, get into a rhythm of punching, dodging and counterpunching.

Counterpunching is the key, and the camera will alter slightly and a sound will play, indicating if you can land a punch, it will be more powerful than a normal punch. Landing the punch is often harder than expected, because the opponent will know as well, and can get a good block up in time. This of course can work against you, as an opponent can counter a counter, so you’ve got to be forceful yet tactical when you fight.

Career mode, called Legacy, is where you’ll spend the most of you time. You can choose a boxer or build your own, and build up your stats through fights and training, winning bouts and series and belts until you’re the Champion. Whilst it’s a pretty solid game mode, there are some issues with it. Firstly is its length. I found it simply too long to maintain my interest. I like games to progress quickly, so found the way you win round after round against the early nobodies, and then suddenly hit a brick wall of toughness that is impassable seemingly no matter what you try to do. The amount of time I’ve been stuck at 30, and knocked out with seemingly weak punches and cheap shots is annoying at best.

I realise the trick is to fight lower ranked boxers to build up stats, but I’m far too impatient for that, and I think many other gamers are too. It just feels unnecessary, like a way to prolong the career mode rather than to actually give more substance to it. To make matters worse, the minigames which improve your stats are often overly difficult. Each different type of game gives you a range of stats, but none give you a change to raise all your stats. To get the full range of stats, you need to do very well in the minigame, and some of them feel impossible to achieve more than a mediocre score. Skipping gives you half the bonus, but when it’s only +5 or +6 a stat per mini game, your stats are going to take way too long to raise in such a manner.

So you might choose the bag to rise your heart and chin stats one time, and even though you string moving to 10 zones together in a row, still come out with a grade of “bum”, which gives you half points. And as you can only train once between fights, and fights need at least a month of recovery, you simply fly through the years and it feels like you’re not developing quickly enough. I realise I may be judging this too harshly, but to me games are all about achieving something. If I’m punching above my weight, I should be rewarded, not punished with cheap shots and hard minigames.

There’s also a fight mode, where you can play against the computer with your favourite real life boxers, or two player which is still as much fun as ever. The hits and bruises are as hardcore as ever, and if you have a bunch of mates around watching, you’ll get the same oohs and ahhs as if you’re watching a real boxing match on TV. It’s not quite the party game Rockband is, although it in nearly just as fun playing as it is watching. Online the game is as good as its predecessor, with little lag. Boxing games seem to attract a hardcore crowd online, so prepare for some smacktalk.

Sound was mentioned briefly before, and it’s still great, with impact sounds sounding heavy and forceful. Additionally, there has been some great work integrating the soundtrack into the whole game.Whilst being full of the usual EA tracks, spanning multiple genres such as hiphop, funk, and rock, with some being good and others not so good, during loading screens the tune that was playing in the menu is cut back and looped, and later continues with a different effects process depending on if you’re in a ring, a stadium, or the gym. It’s a subtle but clever way of making you feel as part of the game or story, and not just jumping from menu to menu.

Conclusion:
Fight Night Round 4 is a solid game, different enough from its predecessor to warrant a play through, but I’m not completely convinced there’s enough of a change to make someone who loves Fight Night Round 3 to change. The changes appear more subtle, and whilst technically it’s a better game, I didn’t get as much fun out of it this as I did Fight Night 3.

Pros:
Great boxing action, refined for a more tactical style of game
Great to play two player
Fantastic visuals.
Awesome use of sound

Cons:
Minigames too difficult
Feels like they’ve made things deliberately too hard to prolong gameplay in Legacy mode.

80/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Soul Calibur IV

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I’m not the hugest fan of the Soul Calibur series. Fighting games are all about the fists or fatalities to me, and the Soul series with the ridiculously huge weapons never really appealed. But this game was eagerly anticipated by many people, so I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. And honestly, after playing Soul Calibur IV, I still don’t know what the fuss is about. Sure, the game is fun in a mindless, button mashing way, but all in all the game doesn’t impress me that much.

The overarching story, if it can be called that, is about a couple of swords and the fighters that have been in some way affected by their power. It’s as warped and interleaved as any fighting game, and with over 30 characters, including some not even from the Soul Calibur universe but from a galaxy far, far away, I don’t think it’s possible to understand all the links, even with the handy flowchart they provide in the game. Although there are over 30 Characters, there are really only about 12 different fighting styles. Still, it’s a very impressive amount and you’ll quickly find your favourite type to play.

Story mode was the weakest in the single player game. Choose a fighter, and fight through 5 rounds, and that’s it. You fight two to five combatants each round apart from the third where you face “a formidable foe”; and the final round where, depending on the fighter chosen you get one of two bosses, but it’s all over very, very quickly. Some characters start with an ally and others pick them up as you progress, and this makes short work of the mode, even on hard. Fighting through the mode will unlock different characters as you encounter them, and after defeating the boss, you’re awarded gold, which is used to buy more characters and buy items for the character creation stage.

Arcade mode offers a bit more than the story mode, and features far more interesting stages to fight on. It’s always one on one, but the fights are more difficult as you progress. Until you figure out how to throw, that is, and then it becomes simply a matter of waiting to the right moment then executing throw after throw. Yes, it’s cheap, but it works so well for most characters and modes that it feels criminal not to use it, especially considering there is so much to get through to unlock. I say most characters – some characters have anti-grapple skills that can prevent the character from being thrown, and Yoda, the Xbox360 Star Wars exclusive character, can’t be grappled at all, even by another Yoda.

Tower of Souls is a far better mode, being challenging and fun. You have to Ascend the tower first, and fight different battles and characters on every floor. During each floor block you get to choose a number of characters to fight with. Swapping characters allows them to heal up, which is good against some of the tougher opponents. During each battle you have the chance to unlock chests, which contain items you can use in character creation. It’s not very clear how to unlock the chests though, with some being simple to figure out like “Become a shield to repel the blade” is obviously block the character. Others are a bit more esoterically worded and you’ll need your noggin to work them out. At level 20 you gain Descent, a survival mode. Your character never regains health and you have to make your way through all the stages with just two characters. After defeating every 5th level, you’re rewarded with more items.

I’ve talked about character creation, and this robust mode allows you to take existing characters or create brand new ones and change their clothes, weapons, outfits, hair and skin, completely customising them to your taste. Some are unlocked by playing and completing story modes, and other are unlocked by Honour (basically getting achievements) and others are still unlocked by spending gold. Each character you can make is based on a premade character, and I couldn’t seem to edit some of the unlockable characters such as Yoda or Angol Fear, but otherwise it’s a great editor and allows you to choose different skills for your favourite characters for some of the tougher opponents in Tower of Souls. For example, giving an attacking character HP Drain or Gain is a must for the descent levels.

There’s also Versus Mode, which allows you to fight against another player with another controller. I didn’t really try this out as I only have one controller and don’t get many visitors who want to play fighting games. However Xbox LIVE more than makes up for not having any real friends to play the game with, and most of the combatants are much, much better than they would be.

Over Xbox LIVE, the game plays pretty well. The lobby opens 4 slots for players, and two people fight whilst the others observe. The games can be customised to go for certain amounts of time and to win any number of fights – standard fare really. You can choose to play the game’s regular characters without all the bonuses and abilities, but it’s far more fun to play other people’s often whacky creations, and it’s a real test of your knowledge of character creation as well as skill pulling of combos. I think I learned more going online than I did in the game, simply by watching other people and taking note of how they fought. Button mashing can still win games no matter how skilled you are, unfortunately.

During some matches I noticed some slight lag behind my actions – it was slightly off putting as I’d go to make a move and it would take that fraction of a second to respond. However, the games I noticed it occur the most were the ones I won (which was not many, mind you) so it’s certainly not game breaking. It was observing whilst waiting where I had the most drop outs – starting and playing the game were fine, but I kept getting dropped out when trying to view the games in action.

Soul Calibur is a mixed bag when it comes to presentation. The character models are splendidly detailed, and their fighting moves fluid and impressive. However, some items tend to stick through other items or the characters flesh, so, with one character for example, she had sword hilts coming out of her breasts every time she bowed in the end of fight cut scene. Speaking of breasts, they are truly beautiful in this game, bouncing around almost uncontained within the skimpy clothing of most of the female characters. Yes, I know that’s rather chauvinistic of me, but hey, I didn’t design and make the game, and I have to give credit where credit is due. The way armour shatters with equipment hits is also really cool, and it’s hilarious to see a pant less knight in full helm swinging his sword around.

The bad part is the story telling. Call me spoilt, but I was expecting with such colourful characters that the storyline would be told through video animation. After all, this is a videogame! But it was disappointing to start the Story mode and see a page of text scroll down the screen, much of it poorly translated. And, once you’ve defeated the boss opponent, you’re graced by a short animation of the character dealing with the immediate aftermath of the fight – usually simply teasing the last boss you fight – and then two lines of text. No elaborate animation of the character partying or suffering through life, just a couple of lines that amount to “and they lived happily ever after”.

Also the way the start/end of round voice goes over the voice of the character get’s really annoying. Even though it’s completely inconsequential what is said, it just seems silly to have the two voices, the announcers voice, and the music competing for your ears’ attention. Speaking of music, it’s okay for a fighting game, and although it’s different for the various stages it still sounds pretty similar from one stage to the next. The exception of course is for the Star Wars stages, where John Williams’ masterpiece plays.

Conclusion:
Not being a Soul Calibur fan, I found it a little difficult to fully appreciate the game. Yes, the game is fun and the amount of options and unlockables is incredibly impressive. The amount of characters and styles is huge. Going online and playing against friends with your cool creations is very enjoyable. However, to get the most out of the game you have to unlock everything. And that gets a little tedious. The Story mode is greatly lacking, and the other modes can be incredibly frustrating at times, so it feels like a chore to unlock all the cool stuff for Character creation.

Pros:
+ Incredible amount of unlockables and characters to play
+ Awesome character creation tool
+ Great fun over Xbox LIVE
+ Great Animation

Cons:
– Button Mashing works better than working out combos.
– Throws are too easy to execute.
– Story mode is very weak.
– Unlocking everything becomes a chore
– Bland music.

78/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Def Jam Icon

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When making Def Jam Icon it’s almost as if the developers had a checklist of rap stereotypes and ticked each one off. Aggression – check! Gun violence – Check! Crooked cops – Check! Scantily clad women who are gold diggers – Check! Gratuitous use of the N-Word – Check! Bling up to the eyeballs – Check! Mention of Tupac and Biggy – Check and Check! References to hiphop being more than all this – Check!


Usually when this is presented in a game, the check box for “really bad game” needs to be marked too, but in the case of Def Jam Icon, that surprisingly remains unticked. Ignoring all that rap stereotyped rubbish, what we have here is a solid fighting game that, whilst light on options is still a lot of fun, especially against someone else.

The first thing you notice though is the game menus are a little fiddly and annoying. They don’t seem logical – there is a game mode option, but it ignores one of the options, which is found under its own menu. But once you find your way around you have the options to do the career mode of Build a Label, or you can jump straight into the fighting through Throw Down and Beating with Bass. Throw Down is the main mode of fighting and it’s good to jump into this before attempting the career mode to get a handle on how to play.

Fighting actions are controlled by the face buttons. There’s a quick strike and strong strike, both high and low. Special moves are mapped to the right joystick, with moves reminiscent of Fight Night. For example, move the joystick to the left and then rotate to the right to perform a jump kick for one character, but the same move might be a back handed slap for another. Grabbing, possibly the most important move in the game, is also controlled by the right joystick. Blocking and countering is done by the right trigger, and taunts are made by pressing both bumpers. I was severely disappointed that Lil Jon didn’t scream out “WHAT? OKAY!” Dave Chapelle style with his taunts.

There are 6 different fighting styles with have pros and cons – for example Muay Fly allows quick song switching but it’s harder to break out of grabs, whilst Beatboxer can activate hazards with excellent scratch speeds, but has weak song shifting skills. “Wait, What?!” I hear you ask. “Scratching?” “Song Switching?” With just regular fighting moves, the game would still be pretty cool, but the fun comes from the interactive environments, which are a little different to usual fighting games. They pulse to the beat of the music, and on every heavy beat they strobe with force to lay some smackdown on you or your foe.

You do more damage when your song, chosen before each match, is playing. You change song by holding the left trigger and spinning the right joystick around until the character on screen switches hands, and then you rotate the left stick. This can be countered, so it’s best done when an opponent is laid out on the floor from a beat down or a throw. You can grab an opponent and throw them into a certain area, and if you time it to the beat of the song playing, the environments react and damage them. In the Club level for example, throw your opponent near the pole dancers and the girls will swing around and kick your enemy. Furthermore, if you time your throw with the beat and then DJ scratch (holding the left trigger whilst spinning the right joystick) you trigger the bigger beat to activate the environmental hazard and do more damage. In the club the speaker booms a massive sonic blast that sends your opponent flying across the screen.

I don’t think the “music as a weapon” premise is entirely apt though. You can still beat the game by using only fighting and countering moves. You don’t particularly have to switch songs to get the upper hand, or have any sense of rhythm to time throws and scratches. But the game makes it so you want to do these moves, because they look and feel cool. There’s a great sense of satisfaction in timing the scratch and sending you opponent flying or burst into flame.

The other modes are pretty much the same as Throw Down. Beating with Bass has no scratching disabling hazard triggering, so hits and throws have to be made more rhythmically. There’s also My Soundtrack mode, which allows you add your own tunes either streamed off a PC hard drive, or from a playlist on your Xbox360. This mode is great fun… Beating Sean Paul down to the sounds of REAL Jamaican reggae gave me a great sense of satisfaction, but nothing is better than beating Method Man to the sounds of the Spice Girls.

In Build a Label the objective is to sign up Def Jam artists and sell records to make money, and unravel a fairly trite story of intrigue. The way to sign artists is usually to beat the crap out of them, which is immensely satisfying. Once an artists signs, you’ve got to keep them happy by giving them money for parties and cars and lawyer fees and so on. All of this is done through the computer interface located in your “home”. You have emails that let you know who has the issue, what the issue is, and a simple Yes/No option to solve the issue.

You’ve also got girlfriends to attract and keep happy, and also the clothes and bling shops. The more money you amass, the more you can spend on Bling to get the girls and keep them happy. To get money, you have to budget for your artists’ records and releases. With releases, you determine how much is spent on promotion, radio play, and so on and the simple rule of thumb is the more you spend, the better you’ll do. Again, all this is done through the computer interface.

Once that’s taken care of, the game advances by allowing you to beat the crap out of anyone who bothers your artists, from pestering fans to talent poachers from rival record companies to corrupt cops, and so on. About ¾ the way through the career mode, you’re stripped of everything, and then have to fight the same 3 characters over and over. The last boss battle is a pain in the ass. The computer cheats by throwing you into the same environmental hazard every time, usually from distances impossible for the player to achieve. It is very, very frustrating, and apart from achievements doesn’t seem worth your while.

As a single player game, the game is let down by lack of options. Sure there are plenty of characters, and it’s great fun punching the crap out of bad rappers like Sean Paul, but with only three game modes, six fighting styles that are really quite similar, and 8 locations to fight in, it gets repetitive and dull particularly in career mode. The most fun with the game comes from playing with friends. Online or one on one in the lounge room, it is fun throwing each other about and triggering the environmental hazards. I’d actually go as far to say play this with a friend first then try the single player modes, just because the career mode especially may bore you too much and might make you put the game down and never pick up again.

Graphic wise the game is excellent. During fights, there’s no on screen meter for health, although there’s an option to turn it on. There’s a subtle tint to tell who’s in control – yellow when winning, or blue when your opponent is. This blooms out – shadows become deeper and shorter, light brighter – the more health lost, although when both you and your opponent are low on health it’s a bit hard to tell who is winning. The special effects are great, and the destruction you cause to the interactive environments feels natural, and seeing opponents fly across the screen as a result of you successfully scratching is immensely satisfying. As with most EA games, there’s a deep character editor with loads of options, and a heap of accessories to unlock so you can totally bling out your pimpin’ rapper.

Sound wise the punches and grunts and taunts of the characters are excellent, and the scratching sounds like you’re really doing it, but after a while the whole rap soundtrack feels stale. The N word and B word are so overused it becomes tiresome to hear them. Don’t we hear enough of that when playing on Xbox Live? All the artists who appear as characters have songs in the game, so if you like the Def Jam artists then you’ll obviously love the soundtrack, but the ability to play your own playlists is very, very welcome. In career mode, because you start with only one song and unlock more as you progress, you’ll hear the same tracks over and over. If I hear Mike Jones say “Mike Jones” one more time I’ll get medieval on his ass.

Conclusion:
For me, there’s too much ‘on paper’ that is wrong with this game – the music, the characters, the cliché’s, the lack of options and lack of variety. Yet, in practice and in spite of all this, I did enjoy Def Jam Icon. And a heap of my friends who also scoffed at it ‘on paper’ also enjoyed the game when we played against each other. The solid fighting with the unique music based environments lifts the game out of its rather weak premise and provides an enjoyable distraction. I can’t see myself playing it in a few months time, but I won’t be ashamed to say I enjoyed it either.

Pros:
Deep fighting system
Excellent graphics
Environmental effects brings something a little different to the fighting genre
Great fun against another person

Cons:
Illogical interface makes things harder than they should be
There are not too many options or variety in gameplay modes for single players
Career mode feels a little light and overly simple.
The boss battles in Career mode feel cheap and not a proper test of skill
The whole US Rap lifestyle clichés are perpetuated beyond annoyance

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Dead Or Alive 4

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The Dead Or Alive series has been the fighter all other fighters look up to on the Xbox. Not so much for the fighting, which has always had its critics I’ve always found to be fun, but for it’s appearance. It has always looked phenomenal, pushing graphics and animation to the limits of what’s possible on a console. So when the ‘next gen’ xbox came out, it seemed natural for the console to come out with the flagship fighter showing off the machines power.

And boy does it show it off! Dead Or Alive 4 is the sexiest game ever to grace a console. And this is not because it features scantily clad women with large breasts that bounce and heave in defiance of nature and gravity alongside barrelchested musclebound hunks, although that does, of course, help, but because the game looks simply breathtakingly amazing. From the beautifully rendered and textured character models, the fluid animations when fighting, to the flapping and deeply detailed textured clothing, to the wonderfully sculptured backgrounds in the well lit arenas, the look is simply stunning.

Although some have complained about the porcelain doll look of the characters, personally I think it works very well. The characters are beautiful and not all that realistic. This is no Fight Night, the characters will have arms bent and faces bashed, but show no signs of wear and tear. But I think this makes it easier to beat the crap out of the opposing player. If Tina looked more realistic, I think I’d have a real hard smashing her head into the turnbuckle in the wrestling ring.

Speaking of wrestling ring, the arenas you fight in are simply fantastic. From a street outside a casino, to a rope bridge over a canyon, a market stall, a Jurassic park ‘lost world’ with dinosaurs, to a scientific cryogenics lab, everywhere you fight is simply awesome. The amount of detail is often lost until on you as a player until the game is play online, jumping out at you as you wait for a game, but the detail is very much present in all arenas. From bunnies hopping around, pumas and monkeys, to cheering and leering crowds, there’s always something going on.

On top of that, many arenas are mutli-tiered, with different levels to smash and throw your opponent into. It is utterly satisfying throwing your opponent over a bridge or kicking them through a glass window. There are also obstacles which can be used to smack your opponent into or over, and moving obstacles such as cars and animals that can smash you and your opponent flying. And the game is one of the most well lit I have ever played. In other games on the xbox360 faces can appear ghoulish, especially in blue light, but that issue never crops up here.

The outfits have always been a big part of the DOA series, and this time Team Ninja has truly outdone themselves. Cloth and hair twirl and flow with bodies as they fight, sparkle and glint in the light. The cloth flows in a natural and realistic yet exaggerated manner. The detail on the costumes is outstanding. From the embroidery on newcomer Elliot’s gee, to the detail in Hitomi’s jackets, to the chains on Bass’ wrists, the attention to detail is superb, and you will never think that the clothing look amiss. Well, apart from some of the unlockable costumes, which whilst they still look superb, they also look utterly ridiculous and are laugh out loud funny. Examples are Zack’s silver alien suit, Bayman’s Scuba diving suit, and some of La Mariposa’s rather revealing Lucha Libre wrestling outfits.

Speaking of laugh out loud funny, some of the unlockable endings are hilarious. You’ve got to hand it to the Japanese game makers, they’re a crazy, out-there bunch. Whilst there are a few characters whose endings fit the overall story of the game and series, such as Rya and of course Helena, there are some which are just insane. Brad Wong’s ending is one of the trippiest endings to a video game period, and Liefang’s ending with a pervert groping her breasts and his subsequent ass kicking is achingly funny. It really is worth playing the game just to unlock these cutscenes.

But to unlock the cutscenes and outfits, you’ve got to fight, and if the fighting isn’t done well in a game then there’s no point playing it, even for the amazing graphics, cutscenes, unlockables and so forth. Luckily, DOA4 does hold its own when it comes to fighting. Team Ninja hasn’t tampered with the underlying mechanics found in previous DOA games, but rather have refined and honed the fighting. When you first start the game, button mashing can get you into the game a little, but as you play the game forces you to adjust your style by subtly helping you, as you’ll find that mashing moves get countered time and time again, so you start timing your attacks and stringing different button mashes into combinations.

Of course this help is subtle, and to be a true master of the fighting you have to practice, practice, practice. There is a sparring mode in which you can fight against a dumb bot, which fights back depending on what you set their AI to, and you can learn all the moves presented on screen. This mode is great for learning all the characters special combinations.

However, the series is all about attacking, and to this end blocking and countering have been revised ever so slightly. Countering in the DOA Ultimate was brutal, with half your health sometimes been taken down with one counter. DOA4 doesn’t seem as harsh on the whole, but there are certain combos which simply cannot be countered, and certain counters, especially those of Alpha 152, the end boss, are even more brutal than those found in DOAU. Blocking is all but pointless, as there always seems to be some easy attack that gets through, but can be used in a pinch especially if you find yourself stuck in a corner.

DOAU introduced online play, and DOA4 utilises Xbox Live to great effect. The staging areas are a very Japanese and very cutesy little backdrop, ranging from space stations to jungles to candy land. Your representative in these staging areas are bobble headed cartoon figures of ninjas, crocodiles, cats, dogs, skeletons, even a tree! In these staging areas you can chat to other players without interfering with the battling players, and watch the action on TV Screens. When you enter a battle, you watch the action as if you were playing, and it’s here you can cheer or smack talk the two combatants. It is here you’ll notice just how great the arenas are. As you play on line, and earn points, you can upgrade these staging areas and also buy accessories for your avatar, which is a bit of pointless fun.

Online play was good, and was as fast and furious as battling friends in the same room or against the computer, when it’s not suffering from lag. I found that, especially when playing with people overseas, lag often got to the point of being unplayable. I battled a few American hosts, and the game slowed right down, and it really wasn’t worth it. When playing Aussies, those with greater than 512K connections seemed to play fine, but those with less caused the game to lag, especially in arenas with lots going on, such as the Sahara and Casino levels. As I have ADSL 2+ and get well over 512K, the only time I noticed it really lagging was when 2 or more players were on 512 or less. It was disappointing, but the key is to play with your friends, and hope they have a good connection.

Conclusion:
DOA4 is a must have game for fans of the series, and those Xbox360 owners who need something to show off the power of the console and justify the purchase to friends and relatives. It really is a beautiful game, truly ‘next gen’ in appearance if not gameplay. This is not to say the gameplay is in anyway bad, but there isn’t much here that’s different from previous iterations of the series. This is because, of course, the series has always outdone itself in terms of the fighting, and as the old adage goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

Pros:
Absolutely stunning in appearance across all areas of the game.
The great fighting of the series has become even more honed.
Heaps of single player unlockables and a host of Xbox Live achievements
Great online staging areas that easily facilitate online play.

Cons:
Counter system still seems a little unfair.
Lag when playing online can become unbearable when playing people on slow connections or overseas.

90/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Fight Night 2004

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Fighting games haven’t really changed since they first appeared in arcades oh so many years ago. Generally there’s a number of buttons, and by hitting these buttons in different combinations, you cause damage to the other player. Fight Night 2004 from EA Games seeks to address this by introducing a concept called “total punch control”. This new concept is certainly inventive as well as being a lot of fun; the rest of the game is a bit of a let down.

First things first, let us look as Total Punch Control. This innovation takes the form of taking the buttons out of the equation and using the second joystick to control your punches. You might not think that’s too clever, especially when a game like Grabbed by the Goulies uses a similar fighting tactic, but total punch control takes it to another level. Using the right joystick readies your boxer for a punch. Pushing forward and left does a left jab, and pushing forward and right does a right jab. Moving the joystick left or right, then pushing forward swings the boxers arm out for a hook. Moving the joystick toward back left or right, then pushing forward performs uppercuts.

Along with this, squeezing the right trigger and moving the right joystick allows for blocks. Using the left trigger, you can also wave and bob out of the way of incoming punches. Holding the left trigger and punching with the right joystick performs a body punch. Finally, the black button performs the signature move, and white performs the illegal headbutt or groin jab. It sounds very complicated, and whilst at first it feels a little awkward, it’s meant to simulate the actions of real boxers.

After a while you find the action becomes quite natural, and you can work up quite a rhythm punching and blocking. When all of these manoeuvres are used in conjunction, it amounts to quite an impressive, flowing battle. Timing has always been everything in boxing games, and this is no exception. Duck an incoming blow, throw a left hook to the body, followed by a right hook to the head, and throw in a left uppercut for good measure. Block a punch right, and you can throw a mean follow-up counterpunch. It does work very well, but for those totally uncoordinated there’s the option to use the face buttons for punching, but Total Punch Control is always available even in this mode.

Furthermore, the game is enhanced by its realistic health system. Throw too many punches, and your stamina decreases, and the power of your punches decreases. Getting hit in the head does more damage than being hit in the body, although a kidney punch does more damage than a blow to the arm. This brings a much more authentic feel to the game, making it less of a button masher and more of a realistic representation of boxing, without the weight training and black eyes. More realism comes in the form of cuts and bruises, flying blood, and a wealth of real life fighters from today and yesterday, such as Erik Morales, Roy Jones Jr., Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Joe Frazier, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali. All of these are available during Career Mode, so you might get Ali facing Jones for example. Not exactly true to life, more of a “fantasy draft” if you will.

If your favourite boxer isn’t featured, the create-a-boxer feature is more than good enough to get you the fighter you’re after. Choosing weight, height, fighting stance, facial features and even tattoos will allow you to craft nearly any boxer you can think of (apart from foxy boxers… sorry, this is a boys only club!) There’s also rag doll physics, which kick in with the knockout punch. The one who is knocked out literally goes weak at the knees and wobbly falls to the floor. More often than not you can keep hitting your opponent as they slide to the floor, and it’s especially brutal if you’ve got them in the corner or on the ropes, as you can almost feel every bang of the ropes on their broken heads.

However, the game is let down by a poor career mode, average graphics and a terrible, terrible soundtrack. The single player Career mode is almost a joke. You earn money and unlock certain things, but they’re all irrelevant. Clothing, gloves and protective devices are mostly the same, just different colours, and the signature moves and taunts are rarely used, and not at all if the face buttons are configured to punch. Most of the other unlockables are for the entrance animation, such as your entourage (chicks in bikinis), music and effects. After you’ve seen it for the first few times, you want to get into the fight and simply skip it by pressing a button. There are also only six arenas to unlock too. And in a weird move by EA Sports, you’re forced to retire at the age of 40. What ever happened to the geriatric featherweight division?

Choosing anything but heavy weight causes matches to be long and drawn out, becoming a battle of stamina and wit rather than brute force, much like real life. Whilst this may be more realistic, it turns into a battle of YOUR stamina, as matches in career mode consist of 3-minute rounds and can last for 15 rounds… 45 minutes in one fight is a cheap way of extending gameplay in my mind, and there’s hardly any knockouts in the lighter divisions. This is made even more apparent in two-player mode, where battles can last as long as you set the timer and rounds for.

The graphics of the boxers and the six different arenas are quite good. Light reflects off the canvas, and some of the later arena’s look quite pretty. But these don’t really tax the Xbox at all, and compared to something like DOA3 it looks nearly second rate. The real time blood, cuts and bruises look great, but we’ve seen it before in Mortal Kombat and Tao Feng. The crowd, although rendered in 3D, has the same looped animations and they look to suffer from a bad frame rate, although the action in the ring itself remains steady.

Another let down graphics wise are the fighters themselves. Although they all look different, due to the robust fighter creation system, they’re all essentially the same model with the same moves. For example, watch Ali or Frazier fight in real life, and you can see they’re totally different sorts of fighters who move differently, hold their weight differently, and punch differently. In the game, the only differences between fighters are the stance and the fact that some fighters (Ali for instance) move faster.

Sound wise, the fighters are again quite well done, and the sound of the harder hits will make you wince. The sickening thud of the knockout blow is very satisfying, especially as you near the top position in your career. However, the commentating gets quite repetitive and boring. Sure, it’s boxing, and how much can you really say about a punch, but listen to classic boxing commentators like Howard Cosell or Col. Bob Sheridan or even Larry Merchant, all who have got an excellent range and make boxing exciting. Luckily the commentating fades out as you or your opponent get closer to being knocked out, replaced by a thumping heartbeat that amps up the tension dramatically. In Fight Night 2004, you’ve got a “street” mentality as you work your way from owning nothing and fighting at the Apollo Gym, and this is reflected in the “ghetto” style music, and quite frankly it sucks. P-diddy, Nelly, and a heap of wannabes do awful “rap”, and it makes me think the custom soundtrack feature should be legally REQUIRED in all future EA games. What’s even worse is there’s only about 10 tracks, so you’ll hear them again and again and again.

Conclusion:
It appears as all the effort of Fight Night 2004 went into the boxing controls, and everything else was added as an afterthought. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing: boxing is all about hitting the other guy hard, and any realistic representation that seeks to move away from the plain old button mashing so common to boxing games should be applauded. But the unlockables aren’t really worth it, adding nothing at all to the gameplay, and unless you’re a hardcore player who likes to get 100% of everything then I don’t see many people playing beyond a season, apart from the multi-player.

Pros:
+ Outstanding and innovative representation of boxing moves
+ Fantastic realistic damage. Feel, hear and see the bumps, bruises and blood
+ Excellent range of boxers to fight as or against, and a robust create-a-boxer

Cons:
– Career Mode feels rather empty, with unlockables that add nothing to gameplay and forced retirement at age 40.
– Lightweight divisions take too long to play through.
– Average graphics on the crowd.
– Awful soundtrack and very repetitive commentary.

Score: 78/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Celebrity DeathMatch

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Celebrity Deathmatch is a MTV cult classic claymation series that was spawned out of some whacked mind to fill in time between Superbowl halves back in 1998. Its premise is quite simple – celebrities are dangerous bloodthirsty beasts despite the waves and smiles. They harbour deep hatred of their fans, but more so for other celebrities. Celebrity Deathmatch allows them to fight it out to the death. Its premier episode featured pop groups Hanson fighting it out with the Spice Girls, personalities Kathy Lee Giford against Howard Stern, and drag queen Ru Paul duelling with the plastic fantastic Pamela Lee Anderson. The series is full of witty one-liners and topical jokes. Episodes feature fights between such people as Marilyn Manson and Charles Manson, to Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, but it has never really taken off in Australia, having only been shown on Pay TV. Part of it’s appeal was that American “parent groups” complained that it was too violent and unsuitable for children, as parent groups are want to do, and this of course helped its popularity no end.

Now, we lucky folk get to take it home and play it on Xbox. Play as your favourite celebrity and kill the ones you despise in all manner of violent yet humorous ways. The possibilities of this game combined with the abilities of the Xbox could have seen this be a great game – fight online via Xbox Live, have a cool ranking system, download new characters and arenas… things Xbox owners have come to expect from games. Yet all these possibilities have been avoided. Instead, its as if the developers got as bored making this game as I did playing it, and we end up with a plain old PS2 port of a very bad fighting / wrestling game.

There’s only two modes to choose from, Episode and Deathmatch. Episode sees you fighting through 3 matches, and once the matches are won, there are more celebrities, arenas, and episodes unlocked. Each match has you playing as a different person. In episode one for example, there is Anna Nicole Vs Busta Rhymes, Ron Jeremy Vs Cindy Margolis, and Marilyn Manson Vs Carrot Top, and for each match you can choose who will you be. Annoyingly, an episode is completed, you go right back to the title screen, and then have to choose Episode again to play the next episode. Deathmatch mode is simply one on one, either against computer or another player. There’s also “Create a celebrity”, which is fun for about 2 minutes, making it nearly twice as much fun as the game itself. In this section there are 8 templates (4 male, 4 female) to choose from, with 2 different types of attack modes, and make up your very own celebrity. Wow.

To be fair, there are a wide range of celebrities and arenas to choose from and unlock in the game. But the controls are so basic that it can be completed in a few hours just by simply pressing the Attack (A) button. No matter what character you play, no matter what moves they can do, smashing the A button will see you win the match. There’s an attack, alternative attack, special move, and grapple available to all characters, but there are no special combos or anything more complex to the fighting than pointing in the direction of the opponent and hitting a button. The gimmicky character animations are funny when viewed once or twice, as are the remarks and insults they throw, but they grow thin very, very quickly. The TV series may have got a wry smile out of older people, but the game has totally missed it’s market, with a humour that may make an immature 12-year-old boy giggle, yet this game is rated 15+ because of the “animated violence”.

The celebrities sound similar to their real life counterparts, much like the TV show, but that’s about as good as the sound gets. There are some atmospheric sounds for the arenas, for example Spooky ‘woooos’ for the Graveyard Arena –so lame it’s really not worth mentioning. The graphics are as good as can be expected from a PS2 port; they suffice, but barely. The characters don’t even look like they’re clay. The arena are nothing special either; simple squares, some which go as far as spikes or vents that spew fire, but that’s about it. No mutli-level, destructible environments; you can’t even climb the ropes and jump off them!

[Final Thoughts]

The concept of this game isn’t flawed, the execution is. The fact that it plays as a straight PS2 port is the first in a great number of disappointments. The fact that it is only two player multiplayer, not being able to system link or play online, not having good graphics or sound, all ignore the great advantages of the Xbox. Even so, the game is so simple to play, taking absolutely no skill at all, and the options so limited, that it seems like a wasted effort all around.

Pros:

+ Can beat up your least favourite celebrity
+ Fans of the show might like it

Cons:

+ much too simplistic gameplay
+ very few options
+ very immature humour
+ plays like a straight PS2 port

Score: 35/100