Deadliest Warrior: The Game, developed by Pipeworks Software hit the Xbox Live Arcade this week after the long wait since it's announcement. The game shows itself to be a below-average fighter, but with a few good things tucked in and a very cool concept.
Gameplay is summed up as the typical playing style of a bare-bones fighting game. The fighting has a blocking system in which many warriors in the game take great advantage of, if they can weild shields, while the others have to try and dodge or counter the attacks. This also tends to make some fights uneven, especially in the cases where the ginormous shield can also be used as a weapon on top of being a great defensive tool. Camera control often goes absolutely nuts when fighting a character who is fast and moves in directions to get in behind your character. When camera movement takes away from game play, it causes many gamers, including myself, to rage indefinitely. Being able unlock and choose which weapons your warrior from the TV series can use is an upside to the gameplay of Deadliest Warrior, it helps to change things up. When you are say, an Apache, you can choose from a knife and a tomahawk, and even which type of body paint you would like to wear. The ability to customize your warrior is one of the strongest aspects of the game.
Visuals for Deadliest Warrior try hard, but are far too short to play with the big boys in the fighting genre, like the Street Fighter games and even the Soul Caliber games. When swords during special kills, clip through heads and midsections of your opponent when they aren't supposed to, it looks really bad on the game. This happens almost everytime somebody uses their warrior's special attack kill. The blood also doesn't look like liquid... Things like this don't make the game look so hot. The visuals are their worst in a challenge you get while playing Arcade Mode in the game. You have to chop pig carcases off of ropes much like the people do in the TV show. But when the "pig carcasses" just look like slabs of pink shit hanging from the ceiling you have a problem.
Speaking of Arcade Mode for Deadliest Warrior, it is one of the shortest things I have ever experienced in a game, whether it be XBLA or not. Since there are very few fighters to choose from, you only fight those in the Arcade Mode, including whichever warrior you have selected. So if you choose Viking you have to fight a Viking somewhere along the line. This proves to be very frustrating when you can finish Arcade Mode with a warrior in less than half an hour. Though the game may only be 800 Microsoft Points, when a game is that short this seems a little pricey.
Yet another weak point of Deadliest Warrior is the audio. The in fight sound effects are full of typical sounds a fighter would make, and no more than three for each character. Attack sound effects are also repetative. With sword attacks there is the typical slashing noise heard in thousands of games that involve swords. Use an attack with a shield and you get the punching noise from such great 80's movies as the Rocky Series. And if the lame sound effects weren't enough, you have to listen to the exact same song, which sounds like a rip off of the Mission Impossible song, between every fight in Arcade Mode when it shows you who you will fight next.
Pirates. They'll mess you up!
In the game's defense, it does have some cool features and the concept alone is neat-o. As I said before, the customization of weapons and appearance of your warrior is a strong part of the game. Also, the idea of having some of history's greatest warriors going to battle against eachother in a fighting game is something that could be worked on and turned into a really cool title if they should try this again. The special attack kills mentioned earlier would be extremely awesome if they had made the collision detection look good so that swords weren't going through stuff they shouldn't be. And one final strong point to the game is the gruesome ways you can kill your enemies, without using a special attack kill. You can kill any of your enemies by cutting of any arm or leg, and even decapitation. And really, who doesn't like killing somebody by taking their head off with a bow and arrow? I know I sure do.
So if you are a fan of the Deadliest Warrior TV series, or fighting games and are looking for something to play, I recommend that you look into another game, although Deadliest Warrior: The Game is a mid-priced XBLA game at 800 Microsoft Points, it doesn't feel like it is worth the money when there are so many great fighting games out there. Especially on the service. With weak visuals and audio, and some cool ideas that aren't enough to save the game, Deadliest Warrior did not live up to it's potential in the video game market. If you like the show like I do, stick to just watching and save yourself the let down that this game is.
-Jeremy M.
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