Dom Robinson reviews Fighting Force for Sony Playstation
Distributed by
Eidos Interactive Limited
Price: £39.99
Players : 1 or 2
Memory Card required
Fighting Force
One of his assistants, Snapper, has had enough of this madman's ranting and has
put together one of the most volative teams ever created - the FIGHTING
FORCE
To summarise, the game is a 3D version of the popular late 1980's Renegade
which involved one man against hordes of enemies, up to 3 or 4 at a time - and
some of these charging at you on motorbikes - and to beat them up you either used
your fists or with various implements lying around the playing area.
Playing the Game
Controls
TRIANGLE - Back-fist (punch behind you), or use to grab your enemy
when in close proximity.
SQUARE - Kick, or use to discard object by throwing it.
CIRCLE - Jump.
CROSS - Punch, or use to pick up objects when your character is
directly all over them.
DIRECTIONAL PAD - Move your character around the screen
L1 - Zoom camera in and out of the screen
R1 - Use with D-pad to run.
N.B. L2 and R2 have no function in this game.
Main Menu
From this point you can select a one- or two-player game, or go to the options
screen.
Options
On this screen you can select the difficulty (easy/normal/hard), music and
FX volume, choose mono or stereo sound, and pick the preferred controller
settings from one of eight pre-set configurations.
You can load previously-saved games, load/save game settings or view the high
score table. One essential addition made to this screen is the ability to
adjust the screen's position as it's not always dead-centre on every TV set.
The game can be read in three different languages: English, French, German,
and the manual comes in five: English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Playing The Game
After selecting the number of players, and the two-player selection allows
both players to join forces against the tirade of enemies, the game begins.
On each level you can throw oil barrels and crates at the bad guys, and when
they're on the ground give them a kick to finish them off.
Alternatively take it one step further and use knives, bottles or crow-bars,
or seriously go for the throat and blow the crap out of them by shooting with
guns and shotguns. You can get some of these items by smashing up certain items
of scenery.
You can save the game, or gain continues to carry on at the same level, only
at set points which can be a pain at first as it's quite difficult to get used
to the controls so it's easy to die. After completing a level you can choose
to move to one of two or three new places.
Character Select
There are four characters you can choose from, each with their own special
moves, although if you're playing a two-player game you can't both have the
same character.
Mace Daniels : Mace is Fighting Force 's answer to Nikita - not brash, loud
or annoying, but a woman aware of her sexual magnetism. This, coupled with
her array of martial arts and weaponry skills, makes her a fighter than men
as well as women envy.
Hawk Manson : Hawk is an aggro vigilante who has the hots for Mace, and
while he has several jobs on the go at any one time, he takes this one in a
bid to get closer to her. In addition, he also took the job as he was once a
freedom fighter and feels this job is tinged with a bit of "goodness".
Ben (Smasher) Jackson : Smasher has been serving multiple life
sentences and the prison is very fond of him, renting him out to Hawk as it
cuts down on inmate deaths and brings in a wad of money each time this happens.
Smasher is like a loose cannon and will smash into EVERYTHING given the chance.
Alana McKendrick : Alana is 17 and still at school inbetween going out
raving at night. When asked by Mace to help defeat Dr. Zeng she jumps at the
chance as Alana is his illegitimate daughter and feels it's her responsibility
to stop him trying to end the world.
Gameplay Tips
If someone approaches you from behind, back-fist them, then as it turns
you around, kick and punch until they're history.
When you've finished with a gun after firing all the bullets, throw it away
in the direction of a bad guy to give him a hard smack in the face.
It takes a second or so to pick up something heavy, so if you're
surrounded don't do it as they'll kick you before you've picked it up fully
making you drop it again. Also, you can't run while carrying something heavy.
Use your special moves sparingly as they will deplete your energy.
Try punching and kicking as many objects as possible as they may conceal
useful items to boost energy, or weapons.
Experiment with various button combinations to discover new and special
moves.
Graphics, Sound and Playability
The graphics are very colourful, and the characters are well-defined and
interact accurately with the bad guys, but strangely have a habit of being able
to walk through parts of the scenery.
The FX sound accompanies the game well as the bad guys groan as you thump them
again and again, or scenery shatters as you smash into it. The rocket launcher
is one of my favourites when you let rip, and another nice touch is the
helicopter which flies around in the game's opening menu screen. A cool stereo
soundtrack also plays in the background during the game.
For playability, one minus point at first is that while running around each
level is that the scenery revolves either because something is about to happen
- eg. a truck full of bad guys crashing into the scene - or simply as a matter
of course, so for example if you run to the left the screen revolves so you end
up running down the screen to the bottom. A bit disconcerting at first, but
fine once you get used to it.
Overall
Overall, this game isn't going to win any prizes for originality, but there's
a lot of fun to be had here, and you'll enjoy it if, like me, you want to
defeat the bad guys by applying plenty of violence either by kicking, punching,
shooting or throwing anything that you can get your hands on.
Its longevity is something that will depend on the person playing it. It's
certainly something I could play through to the end with one of the characters,
and I picked Smasher as he causes the most carnage, but the results of the
respective moves between the four characters are too similar to take each one
through the whole game to the finish. The reason being that the gameplay during
each scene is quite samey.
However, if you do go through the game again with other characters you can
choose a different route to take, or play the two-player mode in which you can
either play co-operatively with the other character, or kick the crap out of
each other :)
If you're after some more info on Eidos's games, you can check out their
official Website at
www.eidosinteractive.com
Graphics : 4/5
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.
[Up to the top of this page]
Amazon.co.uk Widgets
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
