Thrill Kill

"A serving-size package of disembowelment."

''Did that dominatrix just hit that poor midget with a cattle prod?''

I consider myself a fortunate gamer. I am one of the few elite members that owns Thrill Kill, perhaps the most unabashed death-fest on the PS. The catch? It was discontinued. EA, after taking over Thrill Kill's development team, decided to scrap the game, as they felt the release of it would destroy their public image. Perhaps they were right. Had this game come into public release, I don't think mainstream America could sit tight with the fact that this game would sit on store shelves just waiting for a chance to corrupt the impressionable piles of stunted growth all over the country.

The rest of us, however, refused to accept this, finding whatever method we could in order to obtain and play the game. So what if the moral majority would poo themselves over this game, we still wanted a game that promised gore like nothing before it.

Thrill Kill was a game that was hyped like no other: not only was it brutal, but it allowed 4 players to have at it. The game played as a 4-player deathmatch, and the winner was allowed to messily tear apart the loser. This didn't push the envelope, it tore it into little pieces, put those pieces in a .357, and shot it into your skull. Thrill Kill makes Mortal Kombat 3 look like an episode of Martha Stewart living.

With what it had going for it with the screenshots and premise alone, I tracked a beta copy (which is all that exists of it, truthfully) down and played like there was no tomorrow. Thrill Kill, for being as overtly gory as it is, delivers fun and solid gameplay. If you have the means by which to play this game (mod chip), and some connection to allow you to obtain this game, by all means play it.

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STORY
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''These guys look pretty good for being in hell.''

I liked the premise. The fighters in Thrill Kill are in hell. The one who is the winner of whatever pseudo-tournament that's going on gets out. Sweet deal, I think. It's a damned good motivation to continue to fight, as whatever unspeakable atrocities you render unto your opponent gets you one step closer to ...out of hell. Purgatory, heaven, I don't know, but it's not hell!

The characters are among the most interesting I've seen, and each has a story that explains what they did to get into hell. There's a fireman that likes to start fires as opposed to stopping them, a judge that gave up with the legal system and started executing released criminals willy-nilly, and a redneck that died due to a tapeworm infection from eating people. This is a sampler. My personal favorite is (are?) the Siamese twins joined at the torso, which proves that 1/2 + 1/2 does indeed equal 1.

The thing I admire about Thrill Kill is that it gives you the chance to play as the bad guys, which they all are. These people are bad bad guys. What's more, it assumes that its target audience is tired of the do-goodnick heroes and lame plot conventions, so the only lessons in the game are hedonistic and violent. I'm in. Do what you were sent to hell for doing in order to get out of it. Strangely ironic, but I can't think of a better reason to tear someone in half.

As TK was left in the beta stages, most versions lack ending FMVs, and I have yet to find a copy that does. I can only assume that the FMVs would show what the characters did when they got out of hell, and what they did when they got in. In essence, the FMVs would probably back up the premise, assuming that they didn't pull a Tekken-like FMV that looked neat but left us more confused than rewarded. Of course, this is all entirely speculative.

I really appreciate the idea that this game doesn't show any repercussion for insane amounts of violence, and the fact that all of these guys went to hell in the first place adds a neat sparkle. This works better than the fighting games that have a ''bad guy,'' as well as Mortal Kombat's storyline which despite the extreme amount of complexity doesn't make it any less banal than it would be without the sub-plots. In short, the violence works in the context of the story.

Story: 9 / 10
Perhaps the best premise for eviscerating another human being.

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GRAPHICS
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''Uhm... ouch.''

Thrill Kill is the bloodiest fighter I've played. The effects are realistic, given the constraints of the PS, and the end result earns a mature rating while avoiding the graphical goofiness of other gore-splatter games.

The characters are great, first of all. No shoto-clone ''I must become stronger'' losers here, we've got a group of psycho-killers. The modeling is a little more low-polygon than I would have liked, but they animate well. Consider though that for four characters being displayed at one time with a smooth framerate, certain sacrifices were probably made. All characters have strikingly different looking styles, and the moves usually have interesting graphical touches. Moreover, each character has four different costumes, some of which have entirely different models.

Backgrounds are impressive, and portray a gritty scene as well as can be expected. My personal favorites were a prison cell, a bathroom, and a sewer system. All have extraordinary amounts of detail, and look good when the camera is both close-in and far-away, a rarity in most games.

Thrill Kill makes good use of colored lighting for atmospheric touches, and it takes the edge off of the character's low poly count. People can glow red, blue, the sewer emits a green glow, and small fires light up the surrounding area. Not anything revolutionary, but it's an effect that works and is not abused.

For as much as I can ramble on about colored lighting, character models, skinning, and frame rate, let's not kid ourselves: the real meat of the graphics are in the gore. The gore is great, kids. When you smack someone, you usually knock loose an adequate spray of blood. Unlike the 41 odd ''catsup blood'' sprites common of MK that fly loose from your opponent every time they're kicked in the shin, TK emits just enough to get the point across. What's even greater is the fact that the blood stains the ground. After a while, the ground is replete with brownish-red blood puddles. Good touch.

Throws and special moves result in lots of gore. Tormentor, a fighter with a chain, grabs a character, and slits their throat with the chain as a regular throw. It doesn't end there either, they stumble around holding their squirting neck wound. I should probably reiterate that there's a reason that this game might have been discontinued.

Fatalities look great: in fact, each character has 7. There are ''elimination'' kills, and then there are the ''Thrill Kills,'' which allow you to disembowel the other character. Elimination kills have the ability to either decapitate, combo, uppercut, or smash the guy onto the other wall. They're breif, abrupt, and get back into the game without much delay: essentially they accomplish their goal to eliminate and get on with it. This is not to say that they don't give some sense of accomplishment, as your opponent's head flies into the air with a camera-close up of the stump spewing blood everywhere. Smacking someone against a wall results in a painful crunch followed by the opponent's beaten carcass sliding down the wall slowly.

The Thrill Kills easily accomplish what Thrill Kill's goal was going into things: to shock and amaze. Certain ones are so brutal that I was wondering how I could ever be shocked when I saw Johnny Cage punch someone's head off. The level of gore-rendering in games continues to amaze me: one Thrill Kill Combo is 30 seconds long, where an opponent is punched repeatedly and battered on the ground until it turns a crimson hue. After the savage beating, the victim is swung around by the legs until they rip off.

There are several others worth mentioning, like when your enemy is forced to shock himself with your cattle prod, or a decapitation that involves working a chain through someone's neck until it finally goes through on the third try. Who could forget the guy with the Bear trap for a mouth brutally mauling someone, or the devil-midget crushing the back of someone's head by sticking a stilt in their mouth? There's something for everyone, let me make that clear. You're bound to find several characters that agree with you and moves that are so painful looking you'll feel a little sickened to play the game.

Thrill Kill, while not the best technical-looking fighter on the console, ultimately surpasses MK in the gore department. It also happens to look good, and use small graphical touches to elevate it above most of the competition. Think of a middle-ground between tekken 2, and tekken 3. Now, squeeze TK in there, and add gallons of blood. Despite not being the best, it's quite good.

Graphics: 8 / 10
Despite low-poly characters, great blood effects, character design, and backgrounds.

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SOUND AND MUSIC
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''Never before has a choking effect been spliced with an exploding head sound.''

There have been some discrepancies between the various ''releases'' of Thrill Kill. One that may influence my decision here is the fact that my copy has all of 2 tracks in-game. One is exclusively for the title, and another is for all the fighting in the game. I liked the title theme, and I didn't care for the fight-tunes. The music was done by a small Industrial act named ''Contagion,'' which I had never heard of prior to the game. Considering the small amount of music in my version, I liked half of the tracks and hated the other half. I know that there are other versions with the full track sets, but I have yet to find them anywhere.

Sound effects are good. Punches and Kicks are crisp, special effects are good, and any sound that resembles human pain is pulled of exquisitely. There are many good effects, smashes, and ripping sounds that add to the game. Needless to say, that if you sever someone's torso, you'll get a sound effect to match it. Unfortunately, the sounds aren't as of a high quality-nature as the fatalities themselves, so what could essentially be a gruesome sound effect is just an adequate one most of the time.

I mean, sure, I know the guy screams as I rip off his arms and all, but let's hear it with some enthusiasm! Then again, maybe I'm just particularly sadistic about the whole mess. At any rate, the sounds are more generic than I would have liked given this particular game, and the music was a mixed bag from what I heard of it.

Sound and Music: 6 / 10
Fair music, slightly above average sound, nothing extraordinary.

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GAMEPLAY
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''Going to kill me, huh? NO YOU DON'T!

The beauty of a game like Thrill Kill is that although it has a good fighting engine to back it up, chances are that people aren't going to pay as much attention to it as they would the premise. When the game advertises that it's the most violent game yet (of which it is), most people will buy it for that reason alone, including myself to be honest with you.

Much to my pleasant surprise, the game would have been good had it not lived up to the shock factor. The premise is that four people fight it out at one time in an arena. The winner is not the one standing at the end of everything, but rather the first person to fill up a ''Thrill Kill'' meter, which when filled gives you the power to instantly perform an elimination kill. This kill must be done in a certain amount of time, and during this stage the other three people are attempting to not get killed by you.

There's a lot of combat still going on between the three ''losers'' within the time you have to perform a kill, as they'll knock each other down to make the opponent a more appetizing victim to you, or they'll throw someone behind them in order to take the brunt of your move. They can also perform a last-ditch effort to take you down, in order to make your time run out on the kill. If your time does run out, the game goes back into the regular mode, where everyone is trying to pound on people in order to fill their kill bars.

Should you play this game with friends and a multi-tap, it gets really frenetic. People form alliances that are readily broken, other people work to kill off a certain player, and bargaining commences when one person fills up the kill bar. It's really a brutal party game, but one that doesn't feel forced or boring after an hour or so.

The game when players are attempting to charge their bar is incredibly fun, despite a few flaws. Each character has not only a few good one-on-one moves, throws, etc, but also moves geared towards attacking 2-3 people at once. Players often have to make the choice between fighting more than one opponent, or to focus on a single one when they aren't interrupted. Each character has certain strengths that lend themselves more to close-in-pummeling or hit and run tactics, and certain characters are more deadly when used by certain types of players. Again, let me stress that if you're playing this with friends, it becomes a fighting game dream.

Aside from the diversity of special moves, the normal moves work incredibly well. Each character has a giant combo-tree that makes use of extensive juggling, combinations, and counter-hits. Each character has an easy set of combos, normal ''mash the button'' 3-4 hit fare. However, more savvy players can work their way up to 10 hitters without much of a problem. Although they have a good ability to fill your kill bar, they can be easily interrupted by someone bashing you in the spine during all this, so there is quite a bit of tradeoff here.

Even better, there are certain team-up attacks that work well, like one guy holding another character as the third guy hits him in the gut. These moves fill up the bars of both people doing the move, so it works to the benefit of both. Other double-moves are available; two characters can take turns juggling and beating some poor guy, or swapping characters back and forth like a psychotic square dance.

Thrill Kill makes playing defense obsolete. Normally I might be bothered by it, but with the success that's delivered by TK's purely offensive play it's enough to make you forget about certain intricacies delivered by other fighting games. Really, you can play it safe and cautious, but the fact is that unless you pound on people, your kill bar isn't going to fill up to let you become the aggressor in the fight.

For the positive in the game, there was some negative to be mentioned: certain moves are unbalanced and there is a tendency to overuse both the throws and the reversals. Throws grant temporary invincibility, and lead to two players being ''taken out of the fight'' for a while, and the person who performed the throw getting a hefty amount of killbar in the process. It would have been nice to see some combo-counters, a better defense, and a few other shifts to make the game less masher-happy.

Aside from these qualms, Thrill Kill delivers solid gameplay that can appeal to both casual and hardcore fans of the genre. It has a better combo engine than MK, and could be the first game to eschew the concept of a life bar completely. Thrill Kill does what both MK as well as the numerous 4-player wresting games both tried to deliver: intense 4-player fighting with combos, juggles, and tag-teams. All the elements work well, and despite Thrill Kill's somewhat shallow depth in comparison to other fighters, it's a blast to play.

Gameplay: 8.5 / 10
Perhaps more shallow than the competition, but fun nonetheless.

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OVERALL
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''Play this game with the blinds closed, and the door securely locked.''

Thrill Kill could have been one of the only games that I know of that lived up to the hype surrounding it. There was a lot said about it, many previews that I salivated over, and much anticipation of what the game would be like when I got it. It managed to deliver on all fronts, despite the occasional glitch or problem.

Sure, Thrill Kill was scrapped. However, the game still exists. This is truly a cult-classic, fringe game to the max. It falls into the category of supply and demand: there was so much demand for this game that simply canceling it failed to stop gamers from seeking it out and purchasing it in whatever state the demo/beta/alpha happened to be in. I am no different.

I was extremely happy with the result. Thrill Kill beats MK at its own game, and perhaps is the first game to display violence more shocking than slapstick. Aside from delivering the carnal thrills that we've come to expect in a game like this, it goes above and beyond past fighting game conventions in order to bring you a severed head full of fun. If you have younger kids around the house, don't let them see this game. However, if you have friends with a sick sense of humor and a desire to eviscerate people, unleash this game in all of its gory loveliness.

Overall: 8 / 10
Fun to play, good control, and extreme pain. Play and be happily sickened.

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*It's a shame this game wasn't released, but it has little effect on me! :)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/02, Updated 02/18/02