Fighting Force
Reviewed by Jeremy Peeples
Fighting Force was released in November of 1997 for the Sony
Playstation. It was developed by Core Design and distributed
by Eidos Interactive (of Tomb Raider fame.) A version of
this game was planned for the U. S. Sega Saturn, but was
canceled, however, a version was released in the U. K. A
version of the game was released in 1998 for the Nintendo
64. This game was touted as being a 3-D second-coming of the
side-scrolling beat-em-up genre of games, games like Double
Dragon, Final Fight, and Streets of Rage. This game features
4 characters, 2 males and 2 females for you to play as. This
game also features a ton of background interactivity that
had never been seen before.
Graphics-7/10- The main characters looked decent enough,
they were solidly built without much polygon breakup, their
designs were somewhat unique as well. The enemies on the
other hand, are a completely different story, many of them
look identical with only their names separating them. The
backgrounds look great, they are full of interactivity and
are nicely detailed.
Pros- Decent character design. Excellent backgrounds.
Cons- The enemies tend to look the same.
Sound-4/10- The in-game music is very generic, it doesn?t
get you into the game at all. The sound effects are more of
the same, the only time they're decent is when they involve
weapons, however with normal punches and kicks they sound
very bland and muffled.
Pros- Weapon sound effects are good.
Cons- Music is too generic. Sound effects sound muffled.
Gamplay-1/10- Normally, I?d love this type of game, I loved
the gameplay of Final Fight and Streets of Rage, however
they had something this game didn?t; a focused and well
developed game engine. This game has a poorly-made, highly
unfocused game engine, this game tries to incorporate too
many gameplay types, the only problem with it is that it
doesn't do any of them well. The only real bright spot in
the gameplay is the aforementioned interactive backgrounds.
They are very unique and do add a bit of innovation to the
genre. One example of this interaction is kicking a soda
machine, you can then drink the soda to regain energy or
throw it at your opponent.
Pros- Highly interactive backgrounds.
Cons- Poor, unfocused game engine.
Control-1/10- The control is far too choppy and
unresponsive. There's a good 1/4 second lag between your
button press and the on-screen action, there's no excuse for
that kind of unresponsiveness in a game of this type.
Pros- None.
Cons- Very unresponsive controls.
Story-2/10- A psychotic drug lord has taken over the city,
the good guys need to beat him and his band of minions in
order to reclaim the city. This type of story has been used
in every game in this genre, a little innovation wouldn?t
have hurt.
Challenge-1/10- Most of the enemies can be beaten by simply
punching and kicking them repeatedly. The bosses aren't too
tough, Hell, I beat the final boss only using jump kicks.
Replay Value-1/10- I wouldn't feel obligated to beat this
game once, let alone twice. It's far too monotonous.
Presentation-5/10- The menus have a nice presentation to
them, they are very well laid-out. The character design is
nice as well. It's too bad that the actual game isn't so well-done.
Overall-3/10- I'm being generous with this score out of
respect of what Core was trying to accomplish, their idea
was nice in theory, but failed, for the most part in
execution. At lease they tried to do something creative,
that's worth something. Still, I wouldn't recommend this
game. The graphics are nice, but that's about it, the rest
of the game is pretty sub-par.
Final Thought- This game was a huge disappointment, I came
into the game with relatively low expectations, and came out
of it with ever lower ones. Fighting Force really needed a
few more months of development time. Had this occured, the
game may have been what was promised.
