Deathrow

"Simple, fast and fun"

Deathrow has to be one of the most simple yet addictive games ive played The idea of kicking your opponents nearly to death and grabbing the ball/disc I think has been in any sportplayers mind at one point or another and this lets you do it!
The graphics are crisp and competant with very little unintentional slowdown. There are also nice touches like matrix style slow motion kicks etc when you grab your opponent and send him flying into a wall. The game definitely has alot of eye candy and to tell you the truth it would get a lower review if it wasn't.
Sound is good, with thuds and bumps and electrical explosions etc. The box boasts ''featuring fully explicit swearing'' and it wasnt lying either. Ive never played a game that had this much and that includes the GTAs and many higher rated games than Deathrow(which is 15). The music really isnt my cup of tea, so chuck on your own CDs into the Xbox which makes it far more enjoyable, Pantera Cowboys from Hell seems that it was meant for this game!
Playability is awesome, simple, fast and effective, although I cant really see the 140 supposed combat and coring moves, there is a fair few and they all look great. Managing the team, deciding whether your aggresive etc is all good stuff as well. You can decide if your team is a down and dirty kill em all, or a fast paced team etc, this is very noticeable also to what team you choose so decide what style you are going to play and then decide the team, for example the fast and accurate Sea Cats arnt going to be the best for brutality, while the Demons are not into teamwork! On an interesting side note, the fighting mechanism isnt completely unlike GTA3, except a lot more complex so if you liked that you will definitely like this.

The game does suffer from one undeniable downfall- replayability. I played it for the first week or so non stop but it gets noticeably boring after too long just due to the repetitive nature of the game, despite the many different courses and players etc. If your an ardent sport fan this probably wont be an issue, but if otherwise you might find your interest decreasing.

Multiplayer however must be a dream come true and would probably rival the great multiplaying capability of dare I say it, Halo! The game the benefit of allowing 8 Xbox hookups- one for each player in the game! The fun to be had must be incredible and although I havnt played it its been assured slowdown is minimal which is incredible considering the fast speed of the game. And hey if you really want you can forget about the disc and just have a good ol brawl against your buddies.

A great game, but decide whether you can handle hours upon hours of throwing an electronic frisbee.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/03