Fighters Destiny

"This may be the second-worst fighting game ever"

From the brilliant minds at Infogrames, who also bought you such stellar pieces of excrement as GT Racing 64 (or something like that, there was a GT in the title) and Bugs Bunny Lost In Time, comes... Fighters' Destiny. How bad is this game? I'm having trouble summoning adequate terms to indicate its sheer, awful... badness. That's what this game does to your mind.

Graphics: 2/10

Why are the visuals so damn bad? The characters are extremely blocky, the arenas bear no trace of supposed 64-bit quality, and the flat parallax backgrounds might have been acceptable on a SNES (but not great, oh no). For some reason, the game is also extremely murky-looking. This game doesn't even measure up to Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn. I could live with that, if it wasn't so ugly. Graphics don't make the game, it's true, but this one is just unbearably ugly.

Control: 2/10

You'd expect this on a fighting game for the N64. The pad is great for adventure games... but whoever thought fighting games could be playable on it must have been on illegal drugs. Prepare to mash your thumbs into bleeding pulp. And then do it again on the next match! Yeah. Okay. Whatever. The moves work, they're just frustrating to pull off on the cumbersome pad.

Music/Sound: 2/10

There's music? Okay, there's some, but it isn't exactly memorable. The sound effects are Generic 3D Fighting Game standard, and they just don't sound right. The announcer's voice is annoying but bearable; he sounds like the announcer from Need For Speed 3. Not that anyone has much to say; it's a N64 game, which means there's no room in the memory for it.

Difficulty: 2/10

This game would be only slightly harder than average if the computer wasn't busy kicking your butt while you desperately try to escape from a throw or whatever. In the end, you're reduced to mashing buttons as quickly as possible to win matches; however, the cheap, throw-happy AI is more than happy to frustrate you. Ugh.

Innovation: 2/10

Actually, this game has lots of innovations. Oodles of them! Too many, in fact!

You see, it's based on a point system; seven stars (or so) sitting on top of the screen under your life meter, which can recharge. KOs take two points, and so forth. Specials take 5. Throws automatically end a match if you can't escape them. The AI loves to use throws and specials, too. Do you see the horror? Many a match was lost because the opposing fighter, who was dizzied and near death, managed to keep away from me (which is damn hard to do, BTW), recharge, and then beat my head in by throwing me.

Or take the "create-a-fighter" mode. Actually, you can only name your fighter; you're limited to the characters in the game, and their move lists, but in this mode you have to earn all your moves. Okay. The thing is, there's this guy called the Joker, who can beat your head in at any time. He appears on random stages, but you have to fight him eventually. If he beats you, you lose all your moves and the game, which doesn't happen in any other fight. If you win, you'll have to fight him again eventually, and he fights harder. You can save, but that's about it. So if he wins, you're crapped and have to restore and start over.

The fighters are generic copies of more famous fighters with stupid names (the big strong guy is named "Bob." Yes, just "Bob")--you have a ninja, the requisite Cute Chinese Girl, a guy wearing the pants (but nothing else) of a gi, an assasin, a fat throwing guy, etc. They're all balanced horribly, too--the designers spent more time wondering how they could make the game different then on how they could make it playable, and it shows.

As for replay value, well, there's some hidden characters and modes (would you believe a Rodeo Mode wherein you have to fight a super-strong cow? If you can last for one whole minute without killing it, you can fight with a cow! Yee-haw!! Let's go tell Billy Bob!). But who cares? There's a reason this game has been on clearance everywhere for months--it sucks. The only other fighting games I can think of that stoop to this level of badness are Time Killers and Criticom. Avoid this game, avoid it at all costs. And wonder how Infogrames stays in business with all the garbage it releases. (Are they a modern-day Accolade or Acclaim? Hmmm....)

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 04/26/01