Fight Club’s gameplay comes in a variety of similar, yet slightly different modes; Arcade, Story, Versus, Survivor, Training and Online, all of which are essentially made up of struggling against the game’s rather hackneyed brawling system. Story mode is arguably the worst of the bunch, serving up a terrible narrative that is supposed to run as a side story to the plot in the film. You’ll make your way through a bunch of terrible fights that are separated by scenes meant to further the game’s plot – these scenes are told through storyboard stills (which look like they just came off the drawing board) and hilariously bad cutscenes, where the lip synching is either completely off, or the characters don’t talk at all, despite flapping their mouths. What little voicework is present is riddled with unnecessary amounts of swearing.
Bob has bitch-tits. Fully animated bitch-tits.
The actual fighting system of Fight Club can be detrimental to one’s health at one moment, and then seem quite cool the next – it’s this inconsistency that gives the player a glimmer of hope, before cruelly shattering their dreams moments later. Fight Club feels like the mountains of Street Fighter 2 clones that hit consoles and home computers around 1991 – the cheap cash ins with the limited movesets and generally bug and glitch prone gameplay; except that 13 years have passed, and fighters, even the generic ones, have improved substantially. There are three types of fighting style – brawler, kung fu and grappler. Each of these has their own type of move set, but brawler and kung fu are almost identical. Move lists aren’t available mid fight either, so players have to go into the training mode to learn their moves, but the amount of moves available is so limited, you don’t really need to bother. Combos are pretty straightforward, moves can link together, and blood flies out all over the screen when you hit your opponent. The counter system seems like a highlight until the computer becomes quite cheap with it, countering anything you throw at it with the greatest of ease. Get countered too often, and you’ll eventually break a bone, which looks pretty cool. Fights end when your health bar is empty or you submit. It all just seems far too basic to be a serious contender in the days of Third Strike and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution; it’s like comparing kindergarten to university.
Fight Club has 10 basic characters, some of which have very questionable credentials, not having been involved in any fights in the source material. Tyler and “Jack” (who doesn’t actually have a name – he’s the “Narrator” in the film) are the two main characters you’d expect to see, with other fighters like Angel Face and Bob (with fully animated bitch-tits) putting in an appearance. Then you have the “wtf” characters – Raymond the convenience store clerk, who has magically developed kung fu abilities, because as we all know, kung fu comes naturally to Asians. Detective Stern also makes an appearance for some unknown reason. There are a bunch of other filler characters too, such as the Mechanic. However, the silliest characters are saved for the unlockables. Remember the scene between the Narrator and Tyler, where they were discussing their ideal opponents? Well, Tyler’s ideal opponent, former President Abraham Lincoln is an unlockable character. Not only that, but much hated rocker Fred Durst is also an unlockable character, though this game isn’t really worth playing to lay the smack down upon the dregs of humanity.
Where did Raymond find the time to learn Kung Fu if he was supposed to be going back to school to become a vet?
The graphics in Fight Club obviously saw the most work, but they don’t seem to be of consistent quality. The character models are actually pretty good, with some nice damage detail, as well as some pretty high quality skinning of the fighters. Unfortunately, the animation is despicable; you’d have to go back into the early days of the original PlayStation’s catalogue to find worse animation. The developer was unable to obtain likeness rights for Ed Norton and Brad Pitt, so their characters look very generic. Collision detection on the moves is really far off, which not only looks bad, but also hampers gameplay. The backgrounds are also very inconsistent in terms of quality. Music for the game is provided by Tallarico Studios, and sounds a lot like a rush job for a studio known for much better work. Sound effects seem to switch on and off at will, being loud at one point and then non existent the next; when they do work, it’s just the usual punching, kicking and landing on hard concrete sounds. The voice work in the game is just painful – why is Meat Loaf the only one reprising his role?
One has to question what the developer felt they could achieve by making a game out of Fight Club in the first place, let alone an absolutely terrible one like this. You can’t capture the best parts of the source material in this format, so you’re left with tackling one minor piece of the puzzle. There’s absolutely no reason to play this game – not even beating up Fred Durst with Abe Lincoln is enough fun to endure the pain required to unlock them. Not even the “so bad it’s good” comedy value you can get out of bad films can apply to this game; it’s just that bad. Playing Fight Club should be considered an act of masochism.
This review is brought to you courtesy of Infinite Gameplay, with unlimited game rentals starting from $19.95 a month.
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