Deadliest Warrior: The Game Review

Short Version: Deadliest Warrior: The Game is one of the most gruesome and thoroughly enjoyable games on the Xbox Live Market Place, but the game is overly simplistic and doesn’t stir up enough variation to keep me playing it into next week.

After a hands-on with Deadliest Warrior: The Game at E3, I was genuinely excited for the title. I was — and still am — a huge fan of the show, and a game based on the premise of famous warriors throughout history killing each other to see who the strongest sounded like a lot of fun — I wasn’t wrong.

The first thing I did when I booted up the game for the first time was check out all of the different warriors. There are a total of eight to choose from including the Ninja, Spartan, Viking, Knight, Pirate, Samurai, Apache, and Centurian. All of the warriors have different strengths and weaknesses and for the most part the classes are pretty balanced. Characters that carry shields are slower but take a lot less damage when they block, armored warriors can take a considerable amount more damage, and warriors that have no armor are incredibly fast and as a result can tear off most of your limbs before you hit the ground. However, you certainly won’t think the classes are that balanced when you first start playing because the Ninja and Apache will take you to school and have you swearing relentlessly at your television and maybe some unfortunate family members.

The stages included in the game are beautiful and some even have different key points that players can interact with. The Bamboo Sanctuary has bamboo that you can cut down and the Fight Lab features rotting pig carcasses that you can chop in half or knock off of their meat hooks. Yeah, the stages are pretty great, but there are only five of them! You start off with four stages including The Ampitheatre, Jungle Temple, Castle Courtyard, and Bamboo Sanctuary, while you unlock the Fight Lab by going through the campaign.

After I got my bearing I went into the Arcade Mode. This mode is laid out in a fashion similar to that of Super Smash Bros. There are different fighters at different symbols placed on the map and you continually progress until you kill each warrior. There are also bonus challenges along the path to become the Deadliest Warrior, such as “Cut up all the pig carcasses” and “Slice this guy’s limbs off” which are based off of the show’s testing methods. Beating these different challenges unlocks new weapons, but if you screw up on one then tough deal, you will have to go through with the same warrior to try again.

One thing I found odd about the campaign was the fact that the same warriors would eventually fight each other, I mean doesn’t that defeat the purpose of fighting to see who the “Deadliest Warrior” is? I mean if a Ninja and a Ninja square off that just means that 100% of the time a Ninja will be the Deadliest Warrior, but you quickly overcome this minor inconsistency because you unlock new armor when you kill him, err… yourself.

One huge thing I realized when I booted up my first match was just how badly I was getting beat by the CPUs. The game’s difficulty comes pre-set on Hard Mode, so I went into the “Help & Options” option and I changed the difficulty to Normal. I got pumped because I thought it would still be challenging, but it turns out I was wrong — Normal mode is like drowning-kittens easy. I was curious to see what other difficulties there were so I went back into the options and realized that they had three to choose from: Normal, Hard, and Deadliest. I just wanted to screw around so I set it to Deadliest… NEVER do this because if you haven’t assembled some kind of skill by that point in time you will die immediately and likely become extremely frustrated.

The actual combat in the game is a lot of fun, and there is certainly some difficulty in adjusting to fighting. The first thing you’ll notice  is that you lose a lot of health when you get hit, and it makes sense that you should because it’s unlikely that you are going to get bludgeoned 30 times by a horse jaw tomahawk and still win a fight. While on the battle field you have an arsenal of three different weapons that you choose before each match, these consist of a short-range weapon, a medium-range weapon, and a long-range weapon. Deciding when to use each weapon is a big part of the strategy, but a bigger part is blocking. If you do not block you will die, this is a proven fact. You may get lucky once or twice, but you need to master the art of the block and/or dodge.

Deadliest Warrior is going for something a little more realistic and you certainly get that feel anytime you slice an opponent’s head off. Limbs and body fluids will go flying almost anytime you play, and one thing I found ridiculously awesome was that I could have my arm cut completely off and still keep fighting with blood pouring out of my mutilated stump. Some of the best remedies for removing a limb in the game happen when you execute a warrior’s finishing move. The finishing move is different for each warrior, but for the most part there is nothing more satisfying then pummeling your opponent enough to unleash a move that you know has killed them a little inside.

The finishers are great, well, almost all of them. You would assume that the Spartan’s move would look tremendously bad ass, but all he does is run at his opponent, jump up in the air, and THEN poke him in the shoulder a little with his sword causing the opponent to collapse and die. I think I actually yelled, “What the F*ck was that?!” after watching my hero kill a man by poking him in the shoulder a little.

Continue to Page 2 of Game Rant’s Review of Deadliest Warrior: The Game!

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