Perfect Weapon

aka: Body Hazard
Moby ID: 1357
PlayStation Specs
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Description official descriptions

You find yourself on a alien planet and must kick ass and take names using guns and kung fu. You move your 3d character around static 2d screens (a sort of Alone in the Dark-esque game).

Spellings

  • ボディハザード - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (PlayStation version)

57 People (43 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 57% (based on 18 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.1 out of 5 (based on 37 ratings with 3 reviews)

Perfectly awful

The Good
Turning the game off was the only thing I liked.

The Bad
Absolutely everything was horrid. The graphics are terrible even for the era. The prerendered cutscenes look like a high school student's first attempt at 3D modeling and animations. The frequent camera cuts during gameplay makes it unplayable. The back cover claimed it had the "FIRST and ONLY Behavioral Artificial Intelligence" (whatever that means), but it may be the only time it was used because it worked so poorly. Moving the player character is like trying to use semaphore to direct a drunk captain to parallel park a 200 foot yacht. On top of that, the player constantly loses hit points because the "atmosphere is poisonous". The English language has no words that can adequate express the magnitude of frustration that this game provides.

The Bottom Line
A friend told me this game was the worst game ever. I didn't believe him. I've played plenty of real stinkers, so I found it hard to believe that THIS could be the worst, so out of morbid curiosity, I decided to give it a try. After playing it for a few minutes, I could bear no more. This truly is the worst game ever! I've played many awful games since, but nothing that can recreate the horror of trying to play Perfect Weapon.

PlayStation · by Snake Plane (2) · 2006

My all time favorite martial arts game!!!

The Good
If you are a professional martial artist like me, Perfect Weapon has all the difficulty and challenge of real life kickboxing combat.

I have completely won this game on both Windows and PSX, so I am completely familiar with both games.

The action in this game is as completely natural and accurate to real life kickboxing up to against 4 opponents at a time. That means that action is sometimes clumsy and rough and severely damaging, just as a real kickboxing match would be. Gamers seeking a smoother easier combat experience would be better off staying away from this ultrarealistic (in both graphics and gameplay) game.

I have played both the Windows and PSX versions for hours with utter enjoyment. Getting used to the controls takes some practice, but an experienced player like me has total fluid control. On Windows, I'll set up my left hand keyboard controls for movement and the right hand for combat. Perfect Weapon definitely works better on keyboard than it does on the Playstation controller which is adequate but not ideal for its massive move repertoire.

Of all the combat games I have played, Perfect Weapon is my FAVORITE because of its realism and visual beauty. This masterpiece of a game can only be appreciated by hardcore enthusiasts of martial arts like myself.

The Bad
"Perfect Weapon" would be truly perfect if it had these things:

  1. The game needs to be LONGER. 5 moons is child's play for a veteran game enthusiast like me who has easily defeated all 3 Colony Wars for PSX! The game needs 5 more moons, specifically a lava level, a burnt out battlefield, a boxing gym, an medieval castle setting, and a horror zombie level. Make the game two discs long!

  2. The PS1 version is unbeatable in the jumping boot jewel level of Proteus Moon. The opponents are too aggressive, which is the case anytime in Proteus there's a wall mounted control panel staffed by humanoid aliens. I had to grudgingly set myself to Invincible Mode to beat that one stage, but I did not on Windows.

  3. There are purportedly over 100 moves to master. Yet despite all my experience with this game, I have only discovered about 5 combos. This is compounded by the poor responsive of the PS1 controller which doesn't do most of the moves in the owner's manual. ASC games erred by not publishing those combos before they went out of business.

  4. The combat system was revolutionary for its time, as Perfect Weapon was the first 360 fighter in gaming history. That said, there's no strafing ability or blocking mechanism. Making sharp turns against opponents requires expert use of the targeting buttons, but I never truly needed that skill.

  5. It is too easy to pin an opponent against a boundary, crouch, and groin punch that opponent into defeat.

    The Bottom Line
    When I tell people about this game, I describe it as the ultimate kickboxing experience I've ever played in a video game.

I tell people that this game is not for impatient gamers who want to waltz into a fight, easily defeat all opponents, and blow the opposition away with powerups. The skill level of the martial artist is the prime factor, AS IT SHOULD BE.

Also, this game needs to be REMADE. It should be a multiperson adventure spanning hundreds of worlds and different alien species.

PlayStation · by Kevin Huang (8) · 2012

Has to played to be believed.

The Good
I still boot up this game on occassion, just for a laugh. The most fun is convincing others to play it for the first time, it's actually funnier to get a reaction from this than from "2 Girls 1 Cup". Another wonderful (and creepy) thing about this game is that the "Screaming" sound effect from when you kill a humanoid monster is used all the time in movies and TV. My guess is that it is from a generic "Sound Effect" CD and still gets used. My brother and I lose it when we hear it and start laughing and pointing. It usually shows up when someone gets thrown out of a window.

The Bad
Almost everything. From the intro-movie that doesn't make much sense at all, to the ridiculous difficulty, to the repetitiveness of the gameplay... To be quite honest, you only need one move to beat absolutely everything. Anytime you try to shake things up by using other moves you just get hurt. And then you are constantly slowly dying anyway, so you can't afford that. The controls are very hard to get used to, and are sometimes hugely unresponsive. In a game that relies on gameplay as opposed to story, you do not want this.

The Bottom Line
If you see this game for rent (not likely), or sale at a rental place that's finally getting rid of old PS1 titles (this is how I got ahold of it), get it. You will be able to lend it/sell it/ for more than you bought it for. There's a certain sense of pride in owning not only a bad game, but THE WORST game.

PlayStation · by Kyle Levesque (904) · 2009

Trivia

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Best Original Concept runner-up + Adventure Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1357
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

PlayStation 3, PSP added by Charly2.0. PS Vita added by Sciere. PlayStation added by FloodSpectre.

Additional contributors: Shoddyan, Alaka, Rik Hideto.

Game added April 21, 2000. Last modified January 8, 2024.