Angry Gaming 12.10.07: Fight Club

Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 12.10.2007

The first rule of Angry Gaming’s fight club is “Never put your fighting game characters in a brawling game.” Unfortunately, the second rule is “The first rule can be broken in exchange for large amounts of money.”

Welcome, fight fans, to another edition of Angry Gaming, the mixed martial artist that puts the gaming industry's top boxers on their backs. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and I'm literally going through so many crises right now they have cancelled each other out allowing me to write this column. As Iron Maiden said, "Nothing is ever the way it should be".


Fight Club

This past weekend was a huge one for fans of unarmed combat the world over, as some of the toughest fighters the world over stepped into their respective rings, cages, and arenas to battle it out for championship glory and bragging rights. On the boxing front of course, Floyd Mayweather used his boxing rule loophole tactics and incredible stamina to outlast Ricky Hatton and retain his title belt. In the mixed martial arts scene, Mac Danzig took his expected place as the UFC's latest Ultimate Fighter winner, earning himself a six figure contract and a whole bunch of perks. Lastly, for all you kickboxing fans, the seven foot Semmy Schilt took his 3rd K-1 Grand Prix tournament championship in a row. What a weekend!

There's nothing quite like two men (or women, actually) squaring off against each other using nothing but their fists and minds to out do one another, and this is true in video games as well. For almost fifteen years, beginning with the arcade release of Capcom's Street Fighter II, fighting games have been a dominant force in the video game industry. The allure of fighting games isn't hard to see at all. They are much like real life fights themselves: one on one combat where strategy and controlling space is absolutely essential for victory, as well as quick thinking and speed. Fans quickly have become attached to specific fighting game characters, and names such as Chun-Li, Scorpion, Heihachi and Nightmare are practically at a level of household familiarity around the world.

It stands to reason then, that the creators of these fighting games and their specific characters would want to market and expand as much as possible. While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, there isn't anything specifically wrong with casting Jean Claude Van Damme as Sergeant (or was it General?) Guile in the hopes of earning a few quick bucks at the movie box office. That's all well and good, but for some reason the marketing direction for fighting game characters seems to be quite limited, especially in terms of spin-off games. We've seen our favorite fighters shrink down to use puzzles as weapons against one another, and we've seen them build up hit points in the occasional RPG. But more often than not, game companies send our favorite fighters down a long, often treaded path: getting surrounded by dozens of weak and frail enemies while performing their favorite special moves in brawling games.

Whereas fighting games are usually one on one combat situations, brawlers take the more massive approach by replacing one equally matched opponent with several dozens of weaker ones. In fighting games, characters are usually engaged close together, but in brawlers they wind up exploring large elaborate worlds while picking up the occasional power up item. Yet brawlers do allow for some similarities. Take your favorite character from any fighting game, and imagine him/her in a brawler instead. Which special moves would your character be able to perform in order to thwart their foes? The answer is probably all of them, and the controls between brawlers and fighting games don't need to vary all that much.

So while it does seem that brawlers are relatively easy to design as a fighting game spin off and the two genres are indeed closely related, for some reason every brawler that uses fighting game characters has been pretty awful. In fact, fighting game spin-offs tend to meet with really poor critical reactions and at best, mediocre sales. So why do game developers keep making these awful games? Is it really a quick buck, or are they legitimately trying to expand their fighter's universe only to have it blow up in their faces? As always, we learn from example. Here are three god-awful brawling games that happen to be fighter spin-offs, as well as their critical reactions.


Tekken – Death by Degrees



The Tekken series is known for, if nothing else, refinement. While it was Virtua Fighter that pioneered the first 3D fighting engine, it was Tekken that cleaned up the 3D graphics and began importing in real life fighting styles. (Yes I know there are different styles in Virtua Fighter also, but they are barely noticeable in the early games). More importantly, Tekken added personality and legitimate back stories to its characters, and fans of the series were quick to pick their favorite fighters. One fighter who I guess got enough praise to become a mainstay throughout the Tekken was Nina Williams, the blonde assassin, who stars in Death by Degrees.



Death by Degrees tells a tale about Nina being hired as a spy to infiltrate some secret organization that happens to be holding a fighting tournament. Basically it's the same as her back story for Tekken except with a different secret organization and a cruise ship involved. The game also shows a few details involving the history and rivalry between Nina and her sister Anna, and also progresses this feud in the end. The hook for the gameplay in Death by Degrees is that it relies solely on the PS2's analog controls, allowing Nina to both move around at varying speeds and use offensive moves to break various joints and bones in her opponents' bodies.

This would likely be considered a revolutionary system, if it had worked. Critics found huge fault with the game in that computer controlled opponents would often use limbs that had already been broken with almost no penalty whatsoever. In addition to this, the game was known for poor camera angles, and long loading times. The most annoying part, however, was that all combat sequences were limited within the use of the PS2's analog sticks, moving away from what made the original Tekken enjoyable in the first place. Still, Death by Degrees was a far cry from Namco's original attempt at adding brawler modes into their games, which took the form of bonus games on the home console versions of each subsequent Tekken sequel.


Mortal Kombat – Shaolin Monks



I don't know if I've written about this before, but I happened to play through the entire game of Shaolin Monks quite some time ago. At certain stages in the game I quickly grew furious with its design and lack of adequate explanations to the player, and after I beat the game I promptly removed the disc from my PS2, lifted it high into the air, and snapped it in two. The more lucrative reaction of course, would have been to re-sell the game back to my local video game store, but I just couldn't bare the thought of some other poor kid actually playing through the game and experiencing the same frustrations I had. One less Shaolin Monks disc was my gift to the world. It remains the only game I have ever consciously destroyed to this day.



Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks takes place between the events of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II, focusing on the characters of Liu Kang and Kung Lao. Through random events, the two Shaolin warriors wind up chasing after their mortal enemy, Shang Tsung after the events of the first Mortal Kombat tournament. The game details the adventures of the two men through the various dimensions of existence, while also dealing with their own jealousy of each other. On their journey, the main characters face off against many familiar faces and visit some very familiar arenas. Unlike Death by Degrees, Shaolin Monks utilized controls quite similar to the Mortal Kombat fighting games and gave it a very authentic feel, even including variations of the fatalities found in the original fighting games.

While critics did generally view Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks in a positive light, this was mostly in comparison to two previous attempts at spin offs in the series: Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. More importantly, fans took offense at a lack of playable female characters in the game as well as several deviations from the original Mortal Kombat storyline. This in addition to the fact that co-op gameplay was often frustrating (due to the characters affinity for accidentally attacking one another) left Shaolin Monks as a bad taste in more than a few mouths.


Soul Calibur – Legends



At last we come to the next generation. Soul Calibur: Legends is another Namco entry into the world of fighter/brawlers, this time focusing on characters from everyone's favorite 3D weapon series. Currently available only on the Nintendo Wii, the gameplay hook for Soul Calibur: Legends comes in the form of swinging the Wiimote around as if it were an actual sword. However, the game still uses the basic Tekken form of brawler gameplay, and for this reason it has met with mixed fan reactions at best.

Legends focuses on Siegfried, an instrumental character throughout the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur sagas. While this brawler takes place between the events of the original Soul Edge and the following Soul Calibur several characters from even later in the series also make appearances throughout the game. The story focuses on Siegfried's attempts to gather the fragmented pieces of the Soul Edge sword together, while still trying to maintain his sanity and end a way between two great empires.



While the base gameplay for Legends is nothing to write home about, Namco did do quite a bit with the bells and whistles in this edition. The Japanese voice acting is amazing, and the locales, while poorly designed, do have a sense of historical architecture about them. More importantly, the stages are short and the often criticized process of running around for extended periods then mashing buttons has been replaced by brief periods of frantic Wiimote swinging and parrying. Thus far, reviews have been mixed as a love it or hate it affair, with fans scoring the game as high as an 8 and some critics scoring it as low as a 6. Overall sales records will give the final verdict, but those remain yet to be seen.


The Anger

As odd as it may seem, it looks like the moral behind fighter/brawlers is "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Both Namco and Midway have made repeated attempts at transferring their popular fighter characters into brawling games, but have only met with any remote success in recent years. Even these successes are considered mild when compared up against the actual fighting game based material these brawlers come from. It's as though designers go into these projects knowing they can't possibly measure up to their original material and don't even try. That's a dangerous position to be in for any artist, and we can only hope they find inspiration in the genre later on, or abandon it entirely. Until next time, embrace the hatred.