- When the
horror-obsessed and the sexually deprived meet in the ring
A newcomer to the
video game business, Reverge Labs comes right at you by partnering with
publishers Autumn Games/Konami to bring fighting fans another game
that just might be able to keep up with the big boys, or at the very
least keep the sexually frustrated up. Released for PS3 (via the
PSN) and the Xbox 360 (via XBLA) on April 10th and11th
respectively, fighting fans are in for some eye candy and some
disturbing imagery to say the least.
I've never wanted
to go through a cast of fighters in detail so much as this one, due
to the fact that half the cast is arguably rather sexy fighters and
the other half are morbidly disgusting. Double is skinless, and her
parts are all in the wrong location and I'm not sure she has a face.
While the sexy ones are a bit weird too, you could easily reason with
yourself that they are attractive. It's not like demon hair, or a hat
that can talk and has arms is a total deal-breaker, right? Okay,
maybe I'm alone on that one. Still, the cast probably has something
for everyone assuming you're more on the quirky, dark side of life
than the rainbows and unicorn side. They are all well animated and have top-notch sprites. Not quite BlazBlue or Guilty Gear quality sprites but certainly noteworthy.
The real meat of
the game is of course the punching and the kicking. Does it stack up
to the Big Boys (TM) in the world of fighters? I'll touch on the
single player mode first, though as with most fighting games, it
should be all about the vs mode (offline or online). The game has a
good amount of choices of difficulty for the player, but they are
almost meaningless. Ms. Fortune and Peacock are problematic for some
characters even on the easiest difficulty, and all characters are
still able to just throw an incredible combo at you while you're
still trying to learn your character's first special move. On the
flip side, almost every AI-controlled character has a serious flaw
such as they won't block low or if you're mid-ranged to them they
will keep doing a move that won't hit you, enabling you to go for the
kill. As the difficulty settings go up the flaws decrease but the
end result is that you'll breeze through the game if the AI decides
to give it to you more than you learning anything your first few
times. What I'm saying here and took the long way to get here is
that for beginners you may very well be turned off from this game
because of the single player mode. I suggest you go into training,
learn some moves for a character you like and find a friend to learn
with you. Single player shouldn't be taken as the be-all of this
game – far from it.
The difference
between any two fighters are their moves and combos. Now, I can
understand not giving away all of a characters combos within the
game. I'm still learning combos from fighters from years ago. But
just your average special moves being hidden away, posting within the
game links to websites that have the move list? So I have to have a
computer handy as I'm playing a game to learn moves? Training mode gives you some data on damage
dealt and hit boxes but no input display and, of course, no move list.
Since your game isn't going to have a manual (as with downloadable
games) they really should have put something within the game telling
you at least some things.
The cast is rather
small as well with a lot of room for improvement; the story mode and
the developers suggest there are a lot more characters possible, but
the game is already half a month old and finding someone online for a
vs match is already dwindling. Which brings me nicely into another
point, the online pairing really isn't great. A lobby of two along
with no saved replays or spectator mode? We're in an online gaming
craze here, everything has to have an online component, and if that
is true (and I believe a majority of people want this) why are they
continually leaving out the basics. Lobbies of 8 minimum, proper
online pairing (based around skill level or some such) as well as
replays of matches whether you were involved in the match or not
should really all be included.
 |
| hitboxes! |
Downloadable
content (DLC) has been promised if the game sells well enough,
and at last check there was more than 50K downloads of the game.
Things suggested in the DLC were at least another playable character
(though to please me, I would prefer at least three), and a proper
training mode with move list. I can't believe it wasn't a couple
hours work and thrown in at the last minute before launch but okay as
DLC, right on. Finally, while I've heard nothing official on the
next one, I've heard murmurs of better online capabilities. So
basically they said they'd fix quite a few problems I had with the
game.
If the DLC comes
out, most of this review will be thrown out!
In all honesty,
the game looks great, has some sexy along with disturbing, a great
fighting mechanic core slapped around by a mediocre AI, and pitiful
in-game resources
5/10
PS: If they put
out the DLC they want, the game easily gets a 6 or 7 out of 10.
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