Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style

"What up now?!"

-Graphics 8/10-

Excellent. Drawn, rendered, and placed on great backgrounds, and each unique in their own style, moves, and outfits, this game has got some of the better detailed characters of most fighting games.

The backgrounds, and streets you fight on, are your basic non-interactive stages, but nothing to be scoffed at. They have mood lighting, and shadow effects, but are relatively small.

Moves of this game need to be seen to be believed. Every one of them flows off in great detail, using weapons that are symbolic to each of their owners. For every punch, there is a weapon animation, every kick, comes off blazing, and every combination comes off smooth, without a hitch.

Even the special moves, and power moves, create a lighting effect, and cause an aftershadow of your opponent getting nailed, and flung into a wall. Wicked cool. The fatalities are awesome, and neat to watch, although this is where one of the major problems comes in.

Breakdown, and image failure. In some of the fatalities, the polygon's blink out of existance, or come up a sheer white..this isn't good. Neither is the fact that the faces of the Clan, are flat and have absolutely no life to them.

-Sound 8/10-

Wu-Tang music all throughout the game. Some of the tracks that you find in the game, are exclusive to the game only, and can't be bought anywhere else. This keeps you rocking through out the entire game, and, if you're not a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan, you probably will be after hearing this enough.

Sound effects include voice overs, chains, swords clanging, the thud of a kick, and the thwap of a punch, the sounds of bodies flying, and swords swinging..it's all here, and it all sounds great. You don't get much in terms of the generic sound effects like you do in most other fighting games, most of these are true to their respective characters.

You can tell the difference between the sound of this game, and the sound of any other one, as they ring out, and they follow what kind of weapon the person is carrying. The chain clinging is only for the characters that use a chained based weapon, and so on.

-Control 7/10-

A little tough to get used to at first, if you can master one character right down to all of his/her moves, then you can get it across to anyone else. There are right around 30 moves per character, and they all take that dreadded action of timing out the attack to get it to pull off.

Useing the weapons is no giant feat, considering that those that do use weapons, have them intergrated into the punch buttons, you need to find out the combinations however, on how to get a longer striking chain going.

Fatalities abound, these are easy to pull off. Over the years most of us who have played a fighting game, have had to memorize the controller movements and then a button press. Well, in Wu-Tang, you no longer have that...each fatality is activated with the ending hit, weither it be a punch or kick, or a throw.

It's that simple.

-Gameplay 8/10-

Fighting with the Clan against the evil mad man, trying to save your sensai from a certain death by good ol' kung fu fightin'. You'll fight your way through a myraid of enemies that come at you to stop you in your tracks.

During this fighting, you'll find that you are collecting chambers. In doing so, you must complete certain objectives within a match, and collect the chambers accordingly. These chambers must be collected in order for you to unlock the secrets of the game, and you must do this with each character.

Also, combinations are important, you'll need them to survive some of the situation that you get into, such as a three on one survival match, you'll need to learn how to throw, pull off mega-hit combinations, and even how to beat an enemy in thirty seconds.

This game offers one of those awesome features...four player death match. That's right, get a multi-tap adapter, plug it in with four controllers, and have a blast. It's a riot to get a Royal Rumble going with your friends, and finish them off one by one.

-Overall 8/10-

This game has all of the qualities of a great fighting game, the graphics are clean, crisp, and unique per each character. The sounds of the game, or rather, the music, is Wu-Tang...you can't ask for anything better than that.

The control works wonders once you have a good grasp of the moves of the character that you've selected, and even the gameplay is hardcore, and envolving, but, as always..there is something that this game doesn't have, that will keep it on the back shelf for a long time.

That is notarity. It's not Mortal Kombat, although it uses fatalities. It's not Tekken although it does use combinations and moves, and you'll see that as you play. This game does have alot to offer...the multi-player option is a plus, and the literal 'questing' to collect the chambers in order to unlock the secrets of Wu-Tang, is also a monsterous plus.

This game can go either way, rental or purchase. Purchase is recommended if you've got a multi-tap and looking to have some fun with it, and a bunch of your friends. Rental if you're the weekend video gamer that doesn't play a whole lot, and could care less if it has a multi-player option in it.

It's a good game..and trust me, you'll be a fan of Wu-Tang after playing a couple of days of this.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/00, Updated 03/24/00