Deadliest Warrior – Review

When you have high expectations and a set of exacting standards that a particular genre must adhere to, it’s difficult to be forgiving of a game that takes those expectations and runs them through with a sword.

I am Tyler Durden’s sense of extreme disappointment.

You see, the premise for The Deadliest Warrior is fairly promising. Take the most battle hardened fighters from history, shove them into a Tardis and bring them together in a series of arenas to find out exactly which historical gladiator reigns supreme. Spare no iota of detail, leave no stone unturned in your vision of bringing a fairly low-end telly series to life as a videogame.

History teaches us that the fighting genre at its best is a multi-faceted gem that should not be approached lightly. On the one hand you have the sumptuous three-dimensional visuals of Namco’s flagship titles like Soul Calibur and Tekken. On the other you have the technically perfect and finely honed 2D scrappers from Capcom like Darkstalkers and Street Fighter IV to contend with.

I’ve never caught a glimpse of the TV show that the game’s based on and so forgive me if I’m completely missing some vital ingredient that watching the show would bring to my enjoyment of the game. I use the term “enjoyment” loosely because, sad to say, despite my views being slightly balanced and tempered by acknowledgement of the fact that this is an XBLA title, I can’t seriously say that I liked a single thing about Deadliest Warrior apart from the fairly flimsy premise.

There are no brain-mashingly complex combinations to remember in the game, so that’s probably another tiny point in its favour but to be honest, half of the fun of getting to grips with a new fighting game is working out exactly which character suits you best and which combinations you can unleash against an opponent for the most devastating amount of damage. In Deadliest Warrior battles are bloody but unsophisticated. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you choose the Adam and the Ants fan (Apache Warrior), the bum-chinned Italian (Roman Legionnaire) or the mysterious shadowy warrior that gave the world split-toed plimsolls (The ninja), the controls and the lack of extensible combat moves make each fight feel so button-mashy and short that it brings on severe bouts of frustration and anger, for which the only cure is to dig out a better scrapper and play a few rounds of that instead.

Hits don’t seem to connect, and it doesn’t seem to matter how much you tweak your warrior’s arsenal (each fighter comes with their own selection of weapons), you take damage in such a random way that it’s extremely difficult to predict or develop your chosen warrior’s fighting skill in any way at all. That goes right against the grain of the world’s best examples of the fighting genre ensuring that Deadliest Warrior feels like it has all the steely nerve and combat prowess of a street bum after 6 litres of White Lightning.

It might help if the graphics were engaging and nicely done. They’re not. Character graphics look decidedly odd, with buggy eyes and chins you could ski-jump off. Complemented by some seriously iffy animation it’s like a rescue dog with three legs struggling to hold its own in a crowd of pitbulls.

Doubtless there’s a huge section of gaming society who’ll find a few cheap thrills in the bloodletting and dismemberment that is presented during fights in a very “in your face” fashion but we’ve seen stuff like this before, and it looks ridiculously unrealistic when you see fighters gouting enough blood to fill the drains of an abattoir yet seemingly still able to stand and fight. If you’ve ever seen that excellent scene with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that’s what Deadliest Warrior’s fights look like – more comic than gory.

The world is still waiting for a title that can successfully merge history with the art of taking your opponent to pieces bit by bit. Deadliest Warrior just isn’t it and when you consider that you could probably pick up a genuinely good scrapper in the bargain bins for the same price, it really isn’t worth you blowing your dough on this. It can’t deliver on its promises and even if you’re a rabid fan of the TV show you’ll probably fail to find anything impressive or vital in the game adaptation.

Our rating

4/10