Silent Hill 3

It's going down hill soon in Silent Hill. Like a vertical drop rollercoaster.

Now I know, some people will disagree with me and some people will agree with me on this, but that's never really been a concern, just something I know and felt like stating. Yes it's a stalling tactic because I'm still thinking up what to write about while typing this out. But Silent Hill 3 is worthwhile playing. Yes I know, I've not reviewed Silent Hill 2 but I need a while to revisit that one before I go all out in the next few reviews and such. This however is a more overlooked game because it's compared to the previous one in the series while the first game seems to be nodded to and referenced and recognised but never really accepted outside of Silent Hill 2's grand (supposed) presence.

Taken as a game by itself, Silent Hill is about one girl's struggle with the pressures of society personified by an evil fucking town with large monsters. She also may or may not be the reincarnation of God... or A God at least. That said, actually... That's all that really needs to be said.

Not the best of days to have a breakout of blood.

One thing you will notice with this game is that it's very empty of people. Which comes as an odd contrast to the introduction which has our protagonist happily chatting to her father in a burger bar (he's on a phone) until she goes to leave and is stopped by a fat man in a dirty Macintosh (the clothes, the other Macs are just as dirty) before bottling the encounter like a coward and hiding in a toilet. After escaping through the window it all goes downhill from there to Silent Hill.

Silent Hill, a lovely town with a gorgeous hotel overlooking a lake that will likely kill you before you can do any real sight-seeing amongst the fog. Or darkness. Or both.

Oddly enough, this guy isn't a direct threat to you.

What you're basically set up with for the first half of the game is getting your protagonist home while traversing through a mall, a train station, a building site for a condemned building (in more than one sense of the word) and then home before actually getting to the titular town itself where more angsty bombs are dropped and curses uttered.

The game makes sure it's as eerie as ever with changes in setting from going back and forth between an empty looking normal place, to looking like hell changed the fire and brimstone for barbed wired and chain link fencing. While you're navigating various locations you'll occasionally find yourself looking at what would be Dante's realisation of Hell if he was more into metal than fire and ironic tortures. All of which are used to give you the idea that something is not quite right.

It all serves a purpose. I'll be damned if I know what thoug.

But it's never explicitly stated, but certainly alluded to, that whether you're really going through these changes and seeing an alternative, possessed, location. Or if you're being forced to see it in a form of hallucination brought about through other means. Do you really see hell and the monsters? Or are you visualising these things. This also brings into bearing the point about the monsters themselves. Each monster is in some way a personification of a fear that typically plagues the demography of the protagonist. A theme that usually carries through the games (until a point at least...). In this particular game, the theme is around fears that teenage girls might have. Relating to cancer (huge fat things, with fat growing on their fat), split-headed dogs (ok some people fear dogs), walking penii (I can't think of a better way to explain them but the sexual allegory is made there) Lots of monsters based around phallic imagery really, or trying to stick things into our heroine in a sort of penetration/rape reference. Seriously though, one boss basically is a huge (think London Underground Tube Train sized) dick with teeth.

Oh and there's some fears around pregnancy in the game too.

Rhyming slang about being Brown Bread probably isn't appropriate here.

But while that's the hidden bonus for those that look deeply into the why and wherefores of a game, it's not the key focus. There's plenty of running around, finding maps and checking which doors are broken and can't be used and which ones lead you ever deeper down the rabbit-hole that is Silent Hill. Filled with references to multiple pop-cultural situations and occasionally poking fun at the world, in particular with theme park mascots. Robbie the Rabbit never looked so... soaked in ichor before.

Actually I do prefer my mascots, dead.

If you think this looks bad, be prepared for it get worse.

The problem with the game is that the puzzles are either too easy or ridiculously difficult, combat can be a cakewalk or in the higher settings, mandatory to avoid and boss fights can go on for far too long with little hope of victory. Playing in easy mode makes everything almost like paint-by-numbers for the puzzles while playing in hard mode will force you to recollect and understand the order of Shakespearian works, deciphering cryptic poems relating faces to keypads and a very dark and disturbing twist on the "Who Killed Cock (heh) Robin" Nursery Rhyme. A nice touch with some of the puzzles is that they change and aren't really the same on any two playthroughs. Such as key codes which have to be found using specified methods rather than just looking it up online. Mainly because you'll encounter a key plot point or item during the hunt for the answer.

There's very little in the way of subtlety in this game either. If something odd is going to happen, you're always going to be in a position where you HAVE to see it, usually through cut-scenes, but even when playing in the game normally, the camera will be positioned often in a way where you can't avoid the weirdness. Case in point, climbing the long ladder in the crossover from one hospital to another. You will basically have one of the creatures of Silent Hill shoved in your face for you to watch like it is some form of living-art exhibition. Almost like the game designers are slapping you in the face with the obvious and waiting for you to take the time to acknowledge it. A problem with a lot of big money games nowadays that force you to observe everything they've done because it cost them money.

[The blogger was chastised greatly for making a "tap that" reference]

What it does that is creepy, it does very well. The reflection in the mirror being one example, the entire Borely Haunted House and the usual descent into madness that is the crossover from normal world into the demonically possessed world (for the most part) while sometimes it's a more subtle approach than blaring an air-raid siren and other times it's smacking you in the face with cock than a 'bring your own rooster' convention. It does mark however the change in the nature of the Silent Hill games as it is, but I'm side-stepping here.

As far as plot and progression goes, you encounter a nutcase who preaches about God and basically follows you home. Sounds like my Sunday evenings back from the local pub. While they claim they're your nemesis, nothing is really done about it until the mid-point in which it goes from them following you to you hunting down them. Plot wise it's a little stop-start and that's mainly because it can take a LONG time to navigate around the game's "dungeons" and get to the key points that start to unravel the main plotline. Though there's plenty to do at the same time with small sub-plots but these are only encountered along the way as a sort of distraction between the main interests on what is a very long and otherwise dry tour from start to finish.

Big, mean and the first enemy you fight. It's also a normal enemy.

Grabbing a submachine gun never seemed to scream "survival horror" either. Though I rarely use the guns, I prefer the melee and with that end up becoming the monster and just going kill crazy happy on the baddies.

3 Different endings await but gameplay-wise there's little difference between one play and another. You could go for the Alien based ending, which is entirely nonsensical but funny all the same, and does require you playing the game dressed up and powered up like something out of Sailor Moon, but it's still amusing. While the other two canonical endings are just the "You did well" and "You killed a fucktonne of things" (by the metric load) which gives you the good and evil bastard endings. Quite the drop from the multitude of endings in the first few games and even the later ones too by that standard.

Come at me, Sis.

It's linear, it's not too complex and the subtle hidden details are laid bare for all to see. It's a real no-brainer of the series that requires little knowledge before the story and about the entire series if you want to play it but within it there's enough there to make you guess what's around the next corner and what's going to happen in the endgame. Fans will enjoy it, hardcore fans will be left feeling unfulfilled by it and to everyone else it's a horror game with some gross out factors and the paranormal stuff will leave others confused as to what the rules of the games reality really is.

Tetris

Nearly everyone has played this one. If you yourself are too young to have played it, I can almost 100% promise that your parents have. Originally made in 1985 and world popularised in 1989 by being released with the "new at the time" Original Gameboy, Tetris was THE addictive puzzler in computer gaming and by god was it.

The premise is fairly simply, as should be with all puzzle games that want to welcome in anyone and keep them a long time playing the game. You have a blank area that's about 9 blocks wide and about 30 blocks high (depending upon versions, some go to STUPID lengths of having thousands of blocks wide). Within this area, Tetriminoes (Check the official company for the spelling, they don't like "Tetrominoes"), descend from the top of the area and fall steadily towards the bottom. These are shapes made up of arrangements of 4 blocks to form 7 unique shapes. Once they hit the bottom, they stick and become immobile, where upon a new shape will fall from the top again.

The game is about making entire full rows of blocks line up by fitting, slotting and shifting the shapes into an appropriate position so that a whole, horizontal line can be completed from one side to another. Once this is achieved, that line disappears and everything above that line drops down to fill the now-empty space. Giving the player more space to keep playing. The score goes up depending upon the number of lines cleared (a maximum of 4 lines from using a 4x1 shaped piece) and while the score goes up, the speed of the game goes up too.

Different game modes allow for playing either to get to 200 lines and by extension, level 20 in speed which leaves you virtually NO time to shift falling blocks into place or rotate them. Or the other mode where you have to beat the game by getting 25 lines but starting with arenas that have randomly filled walls-with-gaps already in place. Other variations of the game include things like having special blocks within the shapes that act as bombs, or using the ability to store a piece for later use, or getting specific back-to-back combinations of line removals for further bonuses. Or even a vs. mode where getting rid of sets of lines will bump up your opponents lines but in such a way that they could quickly reverse the lines being sent to them and send them back with interest.

Other games and variations have Wordtris where the blocks are made up of scrabble shapes and you have to make words rather than making lines, or you have the ill-conceived Sextris where you're dropping in naked people in various positions and have to remove them by getting them into hump-able positions (I had a very odd childhood didn't I...) before they vanish and allow for more naked people to fall into the fray. Or it could be that you're playing the game in 3D and have multiple layers in the Z-Axis to fill too, or you're playing it in First Person Mode or it's about using shapes to create platforms for a platform jumping character (Mario usually...) to progress across the level in some fashion or another.

Later iterations of the game would play online and allow people to compete around the world in 8way games and having team modes and such. Basically as the technology increases and new elements of gaming are found, someone somewhere is going to add in a Tetris effect along the lines from porn to faces, hats, 3D shapes, rotating the arena rather than the pieces, gravity/physics effects and so on.

The base game however, is still just dropping blocks into an area and filling up a space neatly. It appeals on a LOT of levels and in particular, the OCD group, as this is the ultimate cleaning up game.

It's because the game is so simple and accessible that virtually everyone and their parents have played this at one time or another in some fashion or another. Even adventure games have variations of sorting and arranging spaces, such as Resident Evil 4 where in the inventory, you had to make sure everything was neatly packed away or you'd have difficulties buying new items and such. A bit of a weak example, I know, but the influence is still there and can be found in a great many other games through the ages, even parody examples in games like I Wanna Be The Guy (Press R now, just do it)

As such it's hard to just review Tetris given that it's the phenomenon that it has become, but perhaps that should be the focus rather than the game itself. This is a game that started as a puzzle game and ended up transcending time space and the 4th dimension in some versions of the game where a 2D plane has 4D shapes represented by 3D displays in the 2D plane and changes through versions of itself bending inside and outside to form tesseracts (Hyper cubes) and then fitting THOSE into the area to clear out lines.

How the hell someone is going to get their head around that one ... Actually it's quite a fun game once your mind starts to see things in 4 dimensions.

But this just shows how adaptable a player can become from such humble beginnings within a game. There's no save function it's just you and the area. While there have been a GREAT many contenders to the throne, from columns to bean games, to puzzle fighter and so on, Tetris remains such a firm staple of video game history that very rarely can a falling block puzzle game be made that doesn't owe something to Tetris. It's quick, easily playable (especially the original versions, new versions sometimes over complicate things) and of such a pick-up-and-play focus that you can sit down for a session or two and be done within 5 minutes or find that you're looking outside and the 4 Horsemen are looking over your shoulder and waiting for you to catch up with the rest of the apocalypse because you were too busy to join the rapture.

And I bet they'll want to play it before claiming your sorry soul, and they'll likely be better at than you.

Duke 3D

NO I am not talking about Duke Nukem Forever (yet) or Manhattan Project (yet).

This is Duke Nukem 3D, a game that brought with it controversy with supposedly excessive violence and raw porn in a game. (Yeah right... a few badly animated gifs) which kicked off censors in ways that most hadn't expected since the Mortal Kombat fiasco and followed on with people crying to the skies for us to think of the children (on a game that's rated 18, so why are they playing it?) and stating how life and society are collapsing around us and we'll all live in sin and base needs or writhing orgies and death and murder and...

What a load of bollocks. One thing I hate more than people decrying games for being corrupting, are those that seem to think that just because something doesn't fit into the world view, it must be stamped out or it'll cause the end of the world as we know it.

In some cases, that's not a bad thing.

But behind the uproar, behind the mask of bullshit of focus groups braying for blood like loud-mouthed toddlers, there's a game and that's what I'm looking at today.

With the main competition being Quake, a 2D based shooter being released at the same time as the full 3D games, was always going to be compared as the last solid bastion against the new age of the prosperous future. While Quake was a full 3D game with focus on combat and showing the 3D arena, Duke was able to utilise the BUILD engine to put a 2D engine game into one of the brightest, most colourful (language too) and humorous games of the 1990's.

In a plot that is summed up probably more quickly than I'm about to do, "Aliens have invaded, go kick their ass", starting with Duke leaping from a crashing spacecraft, watching it fall and explode while landing upon a rooftop and immediately presented with the idea of blowing up canisters to cause things to open, dropping down an air vent into a deserted street by a porn theatre and the fighting begins.

With a massive number of weapons, sporting kicking (Both legs on early versions), pistols, shotguns, ripper guns, RPGs, pipe bombs, shrink guns, laser trip bombs, dual-handed mini rocket launchers and a freeze thrower with bouncing projectiles, Duke is well armed and well equipped to run his testosterone fuelled, muscle headed, one-line quoting ass from here to the final boss. Much in the style of doom, each level is ended by either slapping the end button or killing the boss of the level across 3 (initially) episodes.

On the way you'll be assaulted by an army of alien invader, mutated cops (into pigs... how droll), machines and robots while also encountering every movie and film reference possible from the 70s to the present day from Alien to Star Wars, Terminator to Evil Dead, Space 2001 to Independence day. Practically every level has some reference be it audio or visual to any number of aspects of pop-culture.

The game uses a huge array of textures and structures, with some very clever Build engine tricks to allow for rooms above others in a sort of 5th Dimensional space (coined by Marathon originally), allowing for more convincing levels set with a city, a space ship/moon and another city across the episodes. As cartoony as the graphics are, you can still identify the levels and what the intentions were, while red brick walls are very red still and not the dulled out and brown-washed mess a lot of modern games happen to be.

In many levels, there's the inclusion of "babes" that hold various positions of being offered cash to "shake it, baby" or moan "Kill me" of which killing any of these traps will cause more enemies to be spawn, usually those that require several shotgun rounds and likely, the Octobrain enemies. While other areas of the game act as touch plate spawn points for enemies to trigger or appear as soon as you step on a specific part of the floor or enter specific rooms and then in comes the army. Not hidden behind a wall, not teleported in from another room, but actually CREATED right then and there with no warning at all other than hindsight from playing beforehand. In later levels there's a lot of this type of trap.

The designers and makers of this game and levels show their colours as being children of the 70s and grew up in the 80s, in one level you'll find the obelisk from 2001, another you'll find a smashed up terminator complete with outstretched hand and more subtle take-that's such as a Burger House with drive thru, being supplied by a dog-pound from next door, accompanied by the genitally based quip "Nobody messes with MY meat" to really hammer the joke home and bypass all the subtlety one could have mustered.

A lot of the humour is beaten over the players head until they're forced to groan about it or just left scratching their head at the missed joke as it sails over their head at mach-1. The humour is there, but like a lot of time-based jokes, it falls flat when people no longer remember the incident, such as the OJ case with footage of him fleeing, large signs of "Innocent?" and "Guilty!" dotting the landscapes.

Game play however, is smooth and fluid, with Duke running around about as fast as the Doom Marine does (and he turns up too in this game in a secret area), generally outpacing most of the planet and sprinting the world over in short time, even faster when taking steroids, while jumping and ducking allows for a few extra ways of navigating levels that many wouldn't have been accustomed to doing since the days of Doom. The extra functions and abilities found within the engine put it head and shoulders above most of the games on the Build Engine and slaughters all Doom Style games save for the best one or two (of which I will be reviewing later).

Multi-button switches, switch combos to unlock doors, flat platforms over platforms, destructible areas that react to the player blowing stuff up, moving carts/train (noticeable on the Subway level), underwater swimming, falling damage, and many more bonus features not found in your standard Doom Engine game, all await you in Duke 3D. Though in some cases you cannot help but feel that some of the features were written in with JUST one aspect of one level in mind and nothing else. That said, there's a lot of features and tricks that can be made within the BUILD engine (that comes on the CD of the game) where you can create and design your own levels and make your own episodes. For some this aspect might be more appealing than the actual game and certainly had myself making a myriad of games when I first started the game, way, way, back.

The satirical edge aside for the humour, there's a very disjointed feel to a lot of the levels when you're jumping from one to another, going from an adult theatre to a red-light district then to a prison, is rather jarring to the flow of the game and then to a submarine and a factor, before turning up at the San Andreas Fault, one can't help but feel these levels could be done in any order and it'd make NO difference to the overall experience. There's no story to be told beyond getting from a to b and a brief (see VERY brief) talk by Duke to the boss of the episode followed by a short, stop-frame, FMV of him doing something... usually ripping off a head and shitting down a neck.

While there is a large level of outrage over the needless sexualisation and objectification of women within the game, serving as either eye-candy for the player or a pointless additional reminded to beat the level and save people, the game wouldn't have suffered at all had it simply removed this aspect of the game, because otherwise the world gets invaded and everyone's dead except for Duke, Aliens and a few scantily clad women. It's a misogynistic view of the future but one that fits Duke's mentality and atmosphere, whether rightly or wrongly and for that matter, suits the character rather well as a guns-blazing, meat-headded, steroidal ass-hat, but one that's fun to play as.

What is apparent, is that there was little clue at the time that this game would accelerate the brand into super stardom and become something many would remember fondly but never find it accurately re-made with ports to the play station, N64 (yep even on Nintendo), and other consoles through the times, other future games being released beyond Duke 3D with one being a return to the platforming roots of the first 2 games then the stunningly, ACTUALLY released, vapourware of Duke Nukem Forever (and it should have remained vapourware). Nostalgia masks this game as being something far greater than it was and all the hype and failures of recent time’s only further cement this game in being something far more than it actually was.

As a game, it's interesting to see a take on Adult that doesn't just rely on gore and swearing but also sexualisation, which a lot of games didn't for a LONG time, and quite likely because this did it and nobody dared to match it in the same shameless manner, while games in the past had facets of sexualisation, few were as readily accessible as this one (except porn games, but that's just obvious and I don't expect anyone to defend porn games because it takes too long type with one hand). Must take balls of steel to implement that as your object in a game's release.

Maybe one day, someone will release the source code and we'll get to enjoy duke in the same way we enjoy Doom with lots of ports and online functionality pushed through the roof and huge levels way beyond the limitations of the build engine.

Until then, we've only this to go back to and play it fondly.

Bloody Roar

Continuing a trend for fighting games at the moment, one does have to wonder what the appeal is with a genre of games that glorifies the repeated and brutal attacking of one individual by another in a competitive sport-like capacity. We manage to enjoy it in UFC (apparently), Boxing (apparently again) and harkening back to older days where drunk "all-outers" were held in squalid locations where working class individuals and the more sturdy upper class ponces would beat the shit out of each other to the amusement and betting of others.

Even through history there's been the duel, where two individuals have agreed to fight to settle a disagreement (often permanently) chose a location and method in which to have such combat and then murdered one another in the name of "something" that nobody else really gave a toss about. "You sir! Have dishonoured my toast!" "Indeed, I refuse to spread more butter upon such heat-imbued bread." "Then you sir have a duel!" "I accept your duel, just after I have devoured this succulent bread-laden breakfast" "Indeed!" "Quite" and so on and so forth with about as much relevance today as it had back then.

So with the idea in mind that fighting brings about a sense of "I'm better than you" while most parents try to instil a thought along the lines of "Fighting is the last act of a sensible individual" it still doesn't bring about the satisfaction of defeating someone with nothing more than your own physical presence for those of us with more base needs and testosterone than we know with which to do.

This game is another of such mimicry as to try and encourage two individuals to batter the shit out of each other in a virtual ring of combat where might is right, weak is meek and someone is going to have their throat ripped out by a wolf... then get back up and keep fighting... Perhaps a realistic fighter would be boring by that reasoning. But still, here we go anyway.

Bloody Roar sets 8 individuals with their own reasons and oh my fucking god it's another beat em up game. You've 8 characters, which have various bullshit reasons for fighting each other in sequence before taking on the boss of the game. As expected for some it's pride, for some it's finding a cure (Science was usually a better approach) for some it's a DREAM before school, for others it's about protect their children (Which... you end up fighting 2 of them... great parenting there, Mitsuko) And for others, they are the experiment and die at the end... hopeful outlook there but the only one that conveys the message that fighting is pointless and we all are going to die anyway and achieve nothing, a sort of nihilistic approach to a fighting game. You win but so what? We all die anyway so what's the point?

Your characters range from a bouncer guy, large army guy, skinny school girl ninja super fighter (aren't they all?) circus guy, large mother woman...guy, cross gender guy/girl, ninja guy and Chinese modern philosopher guy. Will all beat seven shades of shit out of each other (and themselves in a mirror fight) to get to the final boss, another kid that becomes a floating flying super goddess and then something else later in a truly fair representation of final bosses, i.e. not very fair at all. Nobody really cares on the back stories, it's all about how it plays and how quickly can you launch someone across the room and into a wall, or through it.

The key difference here, is that the game is based upon the idea of anthropomorphism, in which every character is imbued with the magical ability to become a were-creature of sorts that allows for harder hitting moves, new moves, more combos and other such specials such as faster, quickly, agile, (yeah I know, the same thing) and more special effects when the round is over and showing replays.

Every character has a punch button, kick button and a special/transform button which can only be done when your transform bar is full enough and that's done by getting your head caved in repeatedly. Not quite sure when having your body broken up made someone stronger... but it seems to be an industry standard for games featuring super special moves. Likewise causing damage builds the power up bar a little less quickly than having your ribs shattered, legs broken and skull weaved into the ground.

Each character has a full salvo of combos and moves that can be pulled off fairly effortlessly in a way button mashers will gain a few moves but lose out on timing. Each character has 6 specials of the quarter circle forwards and button, and quarter circle backwards and button, variety. Some will be hard hitting moves, some will be unstoppable moves but easily blocked, some are dodge moves, some are holds/grabs and such. Blocking in this game is by simply (wait for it...) standing still. Or crouching for the low attacks.

In this game at least, each character looks unique, is voiced differently and no two characters fight or act the same with regards to combos (specials are ALL that little QCF or QCB combo) while actual button presses and combinations can lead to apparently a variation of 40-70 per character. Underneath the core of the game, is a very complex and very thorough combat system that sadly is ruined by the simple theory of "Find a good combo and repeat it ad nauseam" which can see you through the vast majority of fights and battles. Until you slap the game onto hard mode and then you'll need to start actually doing some fighting and thinking about it.

Combat is held within a standard 3D arena of a floor and 4 walls, the walls are of those magic variety where damaging them is impossible but breaking them happens either at the end of the round or during the fight, usually once someone is put through them though not always. Once the wall is down, the combat opens up to either beating their life bar down to nothing or knocking the opponent out of the arena. Each character has a series of moves that when they connect with an opponent, can launch them straight out of the area or at least slam them against the back walls (unless on the long hypotenuse/diagonal across the arena, then only the stronger chars can do that due to the extended distance).

The norm is to win 2 rounds then fight the next opponent in most combat games, this is no exception so I'll move right along.

The final boss is about as clichéd as a anime/manga boss could possibly be. Starting off as a little school girl much younger than any other character you could play as, she immediately starts off with a transformation into a floating vixen (not literally like a fox, that's already done by the character called fox) who can chain in combos and special moves like there's no tomorrow and has a few long range ones that can hit almost anywhere unless you're blocking. Once her special bar is damaged enough, the final transformation takes place that looks like something between a Minotaur and the H.R.Geiger Alien creature and everything gets pushed up to 11 on the damage scale. Though if you managed to break some walls in the prior fight, the battle can be over rather quickly and make for an incredibly anticlimactic boss fight.

Options with the game can be unlocked for every time the game is beaten and for every character with which the game is beaten. Added to replay and self challenge factor though it does leave one asking, what's the fucking point if I already beat it? Some of the changes include the oft done and now oft missed, big heads mode. A first person view of the fight, a tiny arena, a MASSIVE arena, regenerating health (not advisable on the final boss that can regenerate it back FULLY at all times), change whether walls break quickly, later, not at all, or are already missing (begin the launch fest!) But all of this adds to the game and doesn't represent the core of it.

As responsive as the game is, the game is fast with later editions of the game getting faster and more fluid as the machine architecture became more powerful. This game however is very quick, especially for the faster characters (most are lightning fast at the slowest of times) and will require some impressive reflexes (or in the case of blocking, doing nothing), before countering with various moves and mixers to throw the opponent off guard and then propel them from the arena.

The music tends to set a pace and tone while in the PSX version there are both sets of musical accompaniments, both at least can help set a tone for the fight, with both using rather much more intense compositions for the final boss, but otherwise the fights are the main focus of the game and a few of the tracks will be memorable from the stages that are made.

The game for the time, runs on the gimmick of the transformations, otherwise it's very similar to games like Tekken, Battle Arena Toshinden and such with a 3D arena, 2D movement and combat changing the plane of combat and the arena approach of knocking people through walls and out of the area, done as well in Virtua Fighter. But what Bloody Roar does bring, is an almost tactical fighter with the Furry gimmick that, with the right players and settings, can be a powerhouse exercise of reflexes and reactions.

Beyond that though, it's a 3D fighting game with walking animals, but given that, it's done well and better than a large number of similar games competing for the 3D fighter crown.