Deathrow

"It's not just swearing, there's a game too."

Deathrow is a futuristic sports game. It's actually about a game called Blitz, and the entire game is viewed as watching on BTV (blitz tv). It's a pretty simple game - 2 teams of 4 people try to through a disc through the others teams goal, which is a small circular area about 6' off the floor. The game is played in 4 quarters, and that's it, anything goes.

Modes: (7)
There are only 2 main modes, single match and conquest. In single match you can play any of the teams that you have unlocked (from 18). The meat of the game is conquest. Here you pick a game, and must beat all of the other teams 1 by 1 to become the new champions. On the way you earn money from matches, and spend this on buying or training players.
It's pretty simple, but you do need to manage your team a bit as it also costs money to change divisions (opening a new set of teams), or heal players. So if you blow all your money on a new player, the rest of your team may be only half healed for the next game. And while you can heal during matches, it's more expensive.

The conquest mode works well, and is good fun, but the main reason to play it is to gets unlock credits, which are used to unlock everything for single match. You only have 4 teams of 4 players and 2 arenas to start. It will take a long time to unlock all 18 teams and all 10 of their players, plus 2 arenas per teams and some extra features. And the difficulty you play affects the points. Easy gives you 100 points a win, while medium gives you 400, and it takes 600 to unlock stadiums, and 500-2000 to unlock most teams.

Gameplay: (8)
The gameplay is pretty simple - punch/pass, kick/shoot, Jump, dodge, target. There are special combinations, but you don't need to use them. Generally, you run around, throwing kicks and punches to win the disc, pass the disc around the field and then shoot at goal. Goals are scored mainly by outmaneuvering the goalie, or beating him up. This can include the Deathrow - powering up the disc to knock out the goalie. unfortunately you can't attack while holding the disc, and you run slower, you passing is a must. However, you don't always control the ball carrier, instead controlling just 1 player, changing when you - not the computer wants,so you can beat up the opposing team while your teammates do all the work. Or just simply beat up the whole team - if you KO all 4 players in 1 quarter, you win by default.

Cameras: (7)
The thing that most affects gameplay is the view. There are 2 views - sports and action. Sports is always viewed top down, with you going up the pitch and the stick controls the direction the player runs in. Here everything is pretty easy, it feels like a normal sports game. In Action view it's more complicated. The camera is just behind your player in a 3rd person view, but left/right rotates your player, meaning it takes longer to maneuver. Holding right trigger, faces you on the disc/goal, but in this time an opposing player may tackle you. The main reason to play action is that everything looks better and you get to play in interesting multi-tiered stadiums, rather than the dull bowls of sports view.

Graphics: (8)
This game looks good, not amazing. all the effects are nice, and the animation is superb, as are the character models, but it's nothing special. In multi-player you actually use split-screen, and while I haven't noticed any slow down yet, it is hard to see what's going on in sports view, so I recommend using action view.

Sound: (8)
I'm not big on sound, so I'll just list the features. You can use your own music, selecting a play list of 20 tracks, which is cool. And the players swear! Every team has a different thing to say to another team at the start of the game, and the players reel off phrases at the end of quarters, and whenever they score or hit someone. You can also reel off taunts yourself, which actually work in winding up the opposing team, so their goalie runs after you. So it's not just a gimmick - there is a point to it, and it adds a lots of atmosphere to the game.

Conclusion:
This is a good game. It is quite deep as most teams have different tactics, and it will take ages to unlock every last thing. another good thing is that in any mode, your friends can join in, even in the middle of the game. So when I was stuck on the final match of the conquest, my girlfriend just picked up the controller and spent a few games just bashing the computers goalie, so I could score a bit easier. While the AI is good, it's better on the easy than medium, and it isn't as good as having human players who do specific things. I imagine an 8 player game (using a link) would be great, but I haven't tried it yet.

It's a lot of fun, nice to look at, sounds great, and is easy to play. It may not be every ones cup of tea, but give it a try.

Final Score - 8

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