Fight for Life by FYB and Atari

You are one of eight ex-mortals traveling unexpectedly from the nightmare that was your life to the torment of an early afterlife. One of eight fighters chosen for their exceptional skills and strong will to live.

Don't expect to make friends. You must defeat each of your companions. You have the attention of the Gatekeeper; please him in the tournaments and he will bestow useful gifts. You must win every match, including the final and most terrifying. There can be only one victor; there will be only one life granted... it must be yours. Good luck.

It opens up with some cool music and the beat of the music seems to move the camera around for the intro. I was saying to myself "I hope the camera doesn't move like that in the game!". I got to the select screen and picked my dude. The game started and the camera flew around the fighters in the smoothest way and the Gatekeeper said "round one... ha ha ha ha!" in a totally deep voice. It makes the guy off of MK sound like he just got a swift kick to the 'nads! Anyway, I suddenly noticed that the music was pretty cool too. There are 21 total tracks on it, but they sacrificed the length of each tune for the number of total tunes. The music is mostly guitar-ish grunge stuff and it loops well. The graphics are slick and the texture mapping is done very well to say the least. The polygon count is less than the competition, but the big t-maps make up for that. Every part of the character's bodys look totally 3D, even though they are just flat polygons. Amazing! The play areas are very huge and the backgrounds are smoothed out well. The game is pure 3D. Move side to side anywhere you want. The control is made up of punches, kicks, and an avoid. No block... Avoid! Thats a cool change. There are a ton of special moves and they are executed with ease, with the slightest amount of practice. Brutal and devastating combos are linked up or stacked onto special moves. Complete with a combo counter. You can link up multiple combos, but you won't get credit for them on the counter (dangit!). For the most part, the moves are very cool and are complimented with voice-overs. Each battle goes on until you deplete the opponents health bar ot knock them into the edge which electrocutes the victim. There is blood, but it leaves the screen too fast. The game has a unique feature of stealing two moves from each defeated opponent. You can build up a character and then save him/her with a password. Use this password against computer or human opponents. This makes for great replay value. Each character has a variety of special moves and one move that is a signature move that is unstealable. One thing I would have hoped to have seen in FFL was light sourcing of some type. This effect would have made the game look even more unbelievable. The replay mode is cool, although I would have liked to have seen a auto replay of the last few seconds of the match. As it stands, FFL is an extremely good attemp at bieng the perfect 3D fighter. Although it's not perfect, it has points over almost all other 3D fighters as well as some have points over it. Now to the categories shall we?

Graphics-10

Large characters with extremely detailed texture maps. Very very little polygon flicker(like Tekken or whatever) gives it a very solid feel. Great backdrops and playfields (plain, but still cool). The use of the motion capture system is very well implemented. The animation is good as well.

Sound/music-9

I like almost all of the many tracks, but they are not as long as I would have wished. The voice overs are done well and are smooth sounding. The sound effects are pretty good too, but could have been better.

Control-10

For a game that is totally 3D and off the rails, this is very well done.

Power-9 1/2

High res t-mapping and cool shading. Very smooth frame rate and tons of moves in the game's databank. Huge play areas and motion capture. All in 65,ooo colors.

Fun factor-9 1/2

Off the start it is a riot. With friends it never gets boring. When you play against the computer, there are no difficulty setting, so you might master it with time.