Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry

"Doesn't pass for a good game"

When I first started playing Tom and Jerry: Fists of Furry I got addicted to it. But as time went on, the game got drier and drier. There is simply no variety to the game! The battle layout is 3D - that is nice. However, the CPU can get on your nerves pretty easily.

Despite the fact that whoever made this game was trying to get something of a Tekken 3 (which I don't like) for children, this game was far from satisfactory in the long-term factor.

Graphics (9/10) - Excellent job in this one, I'd say. Every character has excellent shape and is done up pretty well - faces, skin etc. Although I'd say their skin is just a coloured polygon - never mind. The battle arenas themselves are richly coloured and nicely textured, and gives you an excellent feeling.

Sound (7/10) - Not too bad, but too cartoony, and too repetitive as the game progresses. I don't care much for this though.

Gameplay (4/10) - A 3D fighter intended to create excitement. They did not quite make it there. The gameplay itself was not too bad - characters of the series Tom and Jerry duke it out in a 3D arena, using items they can pick up and hurl at the opposition.

Afterwards it gets dry. The weapons all seem to be the same, the objects travel in an unorthodox way, and worst of all is the physics of this game. You get sick of trying to get to the ground immediately because your character seems to bounce a little in the air. You get irritated when your opponent just keeps jumping around in the air, and it gets worse when he's invisible. At times the fight is reduced to an aerofight, where the characters bounce around in the air trying to get at each other, a verb almost virtually impossible.

The CPU sometimes cheats. I'm not a bad loser, and I'm not sore at a challenge, but when you're invisible, the CPU seems to be able to detect your position pretty well, and home in an object at you. Or sometimes different objects of different sizes seem to create the same pathetic damage to your opponent.

The game is sometimes quite longwinded, because the hand-to-hand does far too little damage, and in the later stages, even heavy objects lobbed at your opponent do too little. Although time limits can be set, it can be annoying to try to kill your opponent as his health goes down bit by bit. Difficulty can be adjusted - but they are all still as annoying. Far too longwinded for me.

The only thing good about this game is the variety of stages provided, giving a fresh feeling. You can leap onto objects even to get to higher spots. You can duke it out in a sink, or have a beehive crash down on your opponent's head. A variety of objects (though all create the same effect) as well as certain dangers (though repetitive, for example steam vents) is refreshing indeed. But this even does not make up for the otherwise horrible gameplay.

Story (NA) - Tom and Jerry and company decide to go have a bash-up. What's the big deal?!

Replayability (3/10) - Variety of stages and items are nice, but the characters are nearly all the same, except some are a little weaker. No special moves which allow each character to stand out from each other are available.

I know, there are secret characters to unlock. But unlocking them requires a long, tedious process, and it's not worth unlocking any of them at all. They are all almost the same.

There's a versus mode. Yeah, great! So what? It's still boring to use almost-identical characters.

Buy or Rent? - Rent. You'd get whatever you want out of it in a week, and that's it.

Overall, the company which made this game screwed up the physics of 3D fighting. Bouncing in the air? A hovering, spinning mouse? Nope, that's not it. Go and watch the video instead.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/01, Updated 09/04/01