Fight Club

The Good
It's cheap! But remember kids you get what you pay for! The first five minutes are alright until you start to realise that you've actually experienced everything this game has to offer. O and the soundtrack is from the film so that's a plus. As for anything else...hmm...nope, can't think of anything.

The Bad
Ok, before I demolish this game I want to set the record straight. I’m a big fan of Fight Club, the book and the film, even the soundtracks just superb. So when I saw this game on the market my hopes weren't all that high. I figured it was a cynical attempt by a company to cash in on the popular appeal of Fight Club, so I steered well away. One day I see it in the bargain basket so I buy it just to see if it’s as bad as I thought it would be. In all fairness it wasn’t as bad as I had thought, it was much, much worse. After your first fight, there's the second which was very like the first. Then there's the third which surprisingly is like the previous two. See where I'm going here? As for the much lauded body and bone damage all I can say is overrated. There's only a few occasions where it comes into play and once you've broken someone's leg, arm or back 50 times and seen the same slow-motion sequence well it all begins to loose its impact. Don't even get me started on the "Story mode". Seems to me that it was a developer's afterthought and a very bad afterthought at that.

The Bottom Line
Fight Club, the game, is a product of four or five brain storming sessions. The makers of this game take the basic premise of the book/film, the physical Fight Club part and well… that’s pretty much it. Everything else that made Fight Club what it was; the moral ambiguities, the twisted philosophies, warped logic and some truly great speeches are discarded to make a sub-standard and unimaginative beat-em up which Street Fighter II would surpass. In fact the only things brought from the movie are the music and some of the settings. You could argue that the characters are transferred but to be honest they are just cardboard cut-outs of the originals. One of the strangest things about this game is that as a movie inspired game, its main audience will be fans of the book/movie. Yet this game makes such an unadulterated mess out of Fight Club’s main themes and characters it can only alienate them. If you don’t believe me watch the ending for the narrator’s (“Jack’s”) character, picnics with Marla? Somehow that just doesn’t fit with the Fight Club I know...

The Good
Admittedly, the limb and facial damage, and sheer brutality of the game is pretty impressive. While a game a year before (Tao Feng) had a very similar system, it's still kinda unique nonetheless.

You can unlock Abraham Lincoln in this game, apparently. Four score and he's gonna beat your ass 'cuz FREEDOM.

The Bad
Pretty much everything else. Now, I'm not a Fight Club expert. I seen bits and pieces of the movie here and there, but while the book and movie were surreal and darkly satirical, the game makes an abject case of that, being an example of what it parodies. Nothing relates to Fight Club in any way shape or form. It's a second rate fighting game that makes Catfight look like Street Fighter by comparison.

For the fighting system, it's so run of the mill and ordinary that it makes little to no difference. Combos must be pulled off like Street Fighter or Tekken. Even though I just button mash my way to victory, the combos can be ridiculously easy or frustratingly hard to pull off. Nothing original to differ it is in this game, either. Even the brutality and clothes tearing system was taken from Tao Feng. Compare this to Tekken, Street Fighter, BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat or any other fighting game, it's essentially the middleman's fighter that's so generic, even games with crappier fighting mechanics managed to outshine this (cough Fugitive Hunter).

The character creation system is pretty bad, but it's so useless it's not worth talking about. Like, I can create more things by just drawing them. Or writing them. Or, I dunno, play some Soul Calibur or whatever. The soundtrack is kinda hit and miss, but most of it is crappy nu metal, and you can unlock Fred Durst too, apparently. Way to put insult to injury.

Also, Meat Loaf has jiggle physics. Watch out, fighting game girls! I swear, he's so jiggly, he'd win in a contest with Kasumi for god's sake. Maybe Litchi. Or uh...another Meat Loaf?

The Bottom Line
Now, while the game is a cut above from my worst games of all time because it's in a genre that I really don't mind from time to time, it's still a bad game. It's one of those cases where something gets a licensed game so unnecessary it's promptly blown over and forgotten? Yeah, it's this game. Don't buy it.

Also, did I mention Meat Loaf has jiggle physics?