Fight Club

"Sluggish Game"

Not many people understand the real message behind Fight Club. Sure, a movie titled Fight Club would excite any red-blooded, macho guy --- especially with a premise as exciting as random dudes beating the daylights out of each other, while attempting to create a club where only privileged people could take part in the viciousness. And the movie, released in 1998, certainly was vicious with scenes filled with bloodthirsty fighting for no other reason than to fill the screen with as many blackeyes, bruises, and cuts as possible. But the reason why it became the cult classic that nerds and geeks loved was the intellectual parallel the movie made with society's ills. The self-appointed intellects relished in the nuances of a fight “club”, where the pageantry of admission feels more honorable than the club itself. Fight Club, as barbaric as it was, questioned psychological problems that have plagued all city-states since the beginning of time, but with an air of satire and sophistication never before seen in a brawling movie. Fighting with a moral message? The blueprint for successful movie.

So with this background there are lots of avenues a developer could take to make a decent and fulfilling videogame. They could make a text-heavy rpg with a complex story line weaving the many social problems facing society; all while creating a perfect plateau to flesh out the characters in Fight Club, and include occasional dippings of brutal the hand to hand fighting the series is known for.
Or they can make a disgusting fighting game with absolutely no society probing storylines, character development, hell, no tie in with the movie whatsoever!

All you get in Fight Club is a handful of characters, names unimportant, duking it out to be rewarded with a 15 second fmv clip of the movie. What's the point of beating up dudes for weak prizes of movie clips and a few unlockable characters? Was Fred Durst, perhaps the biggest tool in the entire music industry, supposed to be an incentive to play harder? And even when you do unlock him, he offers little to Fight Club other than the generic punches that all the fighters come equipped with.

But, surprisingly, Fred Durst's chubby body with tattoo-laced forearms is more than a welcome addition to the list of fighters. For some odd reason, VU Games used a surfer dude as a model for most characters, so save for a few, all characters have the same lanky, Ken-Barbie-doll look. The only difference being some have different colored hair, while the more manlier men fight shirtless. Then, they added this heavy layer of sheen to everything, as if each fighter bathes in a tub of Vaseline to soften up their bodies so the damage they take looks all the more impressive.

However ridiculous it may sound, it works. When a wife-beater dude gets punched, just like the movie, big bruises plaster all over the faces. By the end of fights, the dudes look absolutely smashed and battered, like they truly have been through a bare-knuckle slugfest.

But, you won't necessarily cause the damage on your opponents pretty doll face. Sure, you may throw a punch, or you might backup a little and fling a kick to his face, but you won't necessarily be in control. Because the lag in-between your actions and the onscreen actions is horrible, with almost a full second lapsing between your command and the resulting action. You literally have to PRAY you correctly predicted your opponent's position to land an attack. With the timing so ineffective, the advanced moves found in all decent fighting games, like countering, throws, or beautiful combos are basically dependent on the factor of luck. You can try to start a combo, but somewhere in the middle, you'll become confused as to just which command the game has registered, and which buttons are left to continue the combo. And, without any combos, the already thin fighting engine becomes a punch-kick button masher, but with a slow, sluggish pace.

Punch. Kick. Kick again. Repeat over and over.

At times, the engine will just make you laugh. Can you imagine pulling off a miracle and successfully performing a good combo, but just when you're allowed that moment of satisfaction where your opponent falls to the ground, he swoops to his feet in mid, falling-down-animation, lands an uppercut and takes half your own life?

No Brad Pitt. No Edward Norton. None of the famous settings glorified in the movie. No deathly-black humor ripping the fallacies of society. You do get the pink bar of soap with the words, “FIGHT CLUB” screaming towards you in the title screen, but anything even remotely tied-in to the movie has been replaced by a strange story mode where you pummel random dudes as a means to relieve the hurt feelings over your wife leaving you for another woman. So off you go, on a bloodthirsty scavenger hunt for, well.... not the cheating woman responsible for the problem in the first place, and not for the wife, evidently she's not worth the trouble; but you're off to find this soulless figure who you assume has something to do with her betrayal. This soulless, almost mythical figure named Tyler Durden acts as the ultimate antagonist and anybody who stands in your way gets smashed in the face.

Now, with the movie as a backdrop, aren't cutscenes a natural way to relate the story? They don't have to be top-notch, hollywood-production quality, but a crazy lesbian story like this would make for an interesting experience. Wrong. Believe it or not, Fight Club the game doesn't use cutscenes to relate the story. You have the privilege of gazing at watercolored pictures, drawn from amateur graffiti artists that resemble pictures found in a coloring book. If not thoroughly taken back by the horrid stills, the raunchy voice actors try to hide their terrible voice acting by using a slew of curse words. Curse words are nothing more than extreme words of emotion, so the F –bombs dropped in the movie matched well with the gritty story line. Here, the story is so weak, the words stand out as odd and unnecessary, just like the shiny bodies of the fighting dudes.

Wow. What a disappointing movie-based game. The movie was released five years ago. Why the rush? With the die-hard fan base already as large as it is, why not release a quality game that offers more than schoolyard drawings, old men cursing, and a fighting engine where head butts hurt both parties? You know the game sold poorly if on a Friday night, weeks after its release, your waiting in the online lobbies and nobody shows up to play. Not one person came from 7 pm to 10 pm. Even if you're a fan of the movie and book, and you're willing to buy anything Fight Club related to feed that geekiness, do not buy VU Games' nightmare. Not only is it poor, but it barely has any resemblance to Fight Club at all.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/04