Robert Jung fights for
his life!
Overview Life is Hell. You are one of the millions
of countless souls who have been condemned to spend
eternity in the pits of Purgatory, suffering a thousand
torments a thousand times over. But now, in pursuit
of new amusements, Satan has decided to hold a contest.
A number of fighters are selected, and the first one
to defeat the others and overthrow Satan's Son will
be rewarded with release from Hell and rebirth into
a new life. As one of the chosen, you are now in for
the fight of your afterlife...
This minor supernatural
twist on the overused "world's best fighters' tournament"
cliche is the premise of Fight
For Life. In the 3D tradition
of Virtua Fighter, you pit your polygon character against seven
opponents and Damion for salvation of your eternal soul.
You start off with a handful of basic attacks and some
special moves, while more can be earned by stealing
them from defeated opponents. A password feature allows
characters to be saved for future use, and two players
can compete against each other for spiritual superiority.
Gameplay Like many of
Atari's Jaguar titles, Fight
For Life tries to take a
popular video game concept and build on it with new
ideas. Unfortunately, also like many of Atari's titles,
Fight For Life is only somewhat successful, and the ideas
are often obscured by various flaws. Devoted fans of
fighting games will be the ones most disappointed; Fight For Life
is slower-paced and simpler than its contemporaries,
failing to deliver the rapid, immersive action that
many players will expect.
This is not to say that
Fight For Life isn't fun. Rather, it's a different kind
of fun, a more leisurely title with a quirky style for
more casual players. The game's "feel" is
closest to Mortal Kombat - the emphasis is on the flashy special attacks,
and watching for an opening to use a well-timed shin
kick or a head slam. While regular kicks and punches
are at a minimum, there are a fair number of movement
controls like sidestepping, tumbling, and reverse hops.
The game has 40 special moves all together, and by fighting
the computer in tournament mode, you can custom-build
a character with up to 19 of them.
Unfortunately, a lot of
small defects hamper the game and keep the player distanced
from the action. For example, attacks cannot be blocked
- rather, pressing the A button causes your character
to try and dodge an attack. The controls become unresponsive
at random times, and the lack of a game clock allows
rounds to continue almost indefinitely. The rotating
camera is also distracting; it tries to keep Player
1 on the screen's left side, which can be disorienting
when the fighters jump over each other. The computer
AI is only moderately difficult and is susceptible to
simple combinations. Without any difficulty settings
or more advanced options, the replay value is crippled.
The only thing that really
saves Fight For Life from total obscurity is its ability to customize
fighters for two-player games. In the one-player tournament
mode, passwords are given after new moves are added,
making it easy to build a library of characters. With
thousands of combinations possible, players can spend
hours pitting their characters against their friends'.
This is an idea that adds a lot of appeal to the fighting
game genre; pity that Fight
For Life's game engine is
not adequate to fully showcase this concept.
Graphics/Sound Like the game itself, the graphics in Fight For Life
reach for some very ambitious goals, but ultimately
fall short. The fast frame rate provides smooth animation
and swooping views, the heavily-textured fighters have
some remarkable moves, and the game's choice of colors
and textures are reasonable to look at. But it isn't
perfect, as numerous visual glitches are scattered throughout
the game. For instance, because the characters use fewer
polygons than those in other games, they look blockier
by comparison. And while their moves can be rather elaborate,
some have missing frames or modeling errors. Finally,
there's a user-controlled replay camera that allows
you to review the current round; while it's fun to review
your last three-hit combo, it also makes it easier to
see the warts in the graphics engine.
The sounds are little more
than utilitarian. Actual sound effects consist primarily
of basic thuds and punches, punctuated by a combination
of basic grunts and cries to character-specific maxims
and catchprases. The overall effect is passable; they
don't grate on your ears, but they also don't really
whip you into a frenzy, either. Finally, a number of
musical scores play throughout the game, with some generic
heavy-metal grunge tunes for each character. They range
from the slightly catchy to the easily forgotten, but
there's nothing that will give your CD collection anything
to worry about.
Summary
Fight For Life doesn't have a chance in Hell of displacing
Tekken
or Virtua Fighter 2 from the hearts of fighting-game fanatics.
However, as a more casual game for more casual players,
it is a somewhat entertaining diversion. While the graphics,
sound, and game options are barely above adequate, the
ability to custom-build fighters and pit them against
other players saves this cartridge from total condemnation.
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