13-Aug-2001 Nobody likes a good fight as much as Chris Anderson. Which is why we gave this to Patrick McCarthy.
You don't expect a great deal of realism from a beat 'em up. The average fight in the street does not take place between a six-armed demigod from the underworld and a large-breasted female stormtrooper in a bikini and thigh-length zebra-skin boots (except in Coventry). And whereas the average beat 'em up scrap is a balletic affair, with beautiful combatants leaping through the stratosphere like gazelles with Ralgex on their genitals, a proper scrap is a writhing mass of ugliness, takes place on the floor, and looks like someone's emptied a 300lb bag of whale blubber onto a rotisserie. But a good beat 'em up, like Tekken 2 on the PSX, or Virtua Fighter on the PC, at least has a vague feeling of realism. Logical button combinations, varied fighting styles, and characters who move realistically thanks to decent animation.
Oh, dear...
Wargods, a straight conversion of Midway's less-than-impressive arcade game, isn't one of those. Instead, it's straight from the Mortal Kombat/Killer Instinct school, only in 3D. Which means you get the usual range of bizarre characters, and instead of a fight, you have teleporting and ludicrous projectile moves, such as attacking people with a horde of dancing skeletons, or throwing invisible petrol bombs to make them burst into flames. It's more like a circus-based, carpet-bombing campaign than one-to-one combat.
...oh, dear...
You may feel a beat 'em up in which you don't even need to make physical contact with your opponent is the best of all possible worlds. Fair enough. But combined with the crap special effects are some of the worst animations around: one second you're crouching in your oh-so-sexy lingerie, the next you've got your thighs wrapped round someone's neck and your crotch in their face - and you don't know how you got there. This is many people's idea of a good night out. But it doesn't make a good beat 'em up.
...oh, dear
The characters are as absurd as ever, but include the obligatory 'sexy bird' - in this case, one who wears a G-string made of dental floss and leans back and shakes her tits when she wins. You can imagine the designers thinking this will really get us going... but they probably only had one hand free when they worked on it. So no plus-points there either. And that's it, really. Crap animation, ludicrous 'special moves' and tedious characters. Who could ask for more?
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