Game: Fighting Fury
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Tomy
Release Date: 23rd May 2003
Fighting Fury is a more traditional tournament fighter, with arcade, versus, practice and sudden death modes, with a choice of 14 fighters, and 5 stages to fight across. The game was originally based on an anime, called Baki The Grappler when released in Japan, but this isn't evident in the PAL release, unless players are aware of the anime's existence. The only feature which suggests this is the fact that most fighters have unique pre-match phrases which change, based on who they're about to fight.
The game's basic controls are simple; the square button is used to punch, X for kick and triangle for a heavier strike. The circle button is used to block attacks, and R1 is assigned to taunting, which lowers the opponent's "Endorphin" gauge, preventing them from using certain special attacks or regaining energy, if the bar is full. Special attacks can be pulled off via combinations of button inputs, but many of these are far too complex to pull off consistently.
Fights against computer opponents are usually very easy to win, as the AI doesn't seem to be able to defend against the same attack many times in a row, jumping, grabs, or any form of decent strategy. Although there's a fair range of attacks used by different fighters the game seems pretty unbalanced, with certain characters possessing far stronger attacks than others, and even ranged ones which can easily be abused.
The "story" from the anime has either been changed in translation or was incredibly boring, as once players have won, there's a very short and halfhearted attempt at a character ending before the game cycles back to the title screen. Even in the tournament modes, there's no discernable final boss or reason for fighting except to win the "Fighting Fury" tournament.
Graphically the game isn't impressive at all; neither the character models (which seem to have far too many bumps and bulges), fighter designs (somehow they all look the same), nor the stages (which are all low detail) feel as if they need to be on the Playstation 2. The music behind the game is passable at best, but I can't say that it really stood out at all.
Overall Fighting Fury is a pretty poor attempt at a fighting game, the controls aren't bad on the whole, but their sluggishness combined with the lack of easy to pull off special moves means that players don't have many attack options. I highly doubt that most people playing Fighting Fury, at least in Europe, will have seen the anime it's based on, meaning that the characters also hold little interest for them. While it's not completely broken, the best way to describe the game is playable, at best.
Rating: 33/100
Grade: E
No comments:
Post a Comment