A great solo experience, but player exploitation of inequities between the characters mar the multiplayer game.
The only difference here is, Deadliest Warrior pits two fighters against one another who actually existed in real life. It's based on a television show of the same name, and pulls mostly folks from its first season to reenact their battles from their episodes. Don't like how the show turned out? Well, now you can put the winner in his place in a number of combat modes. There's the standard Arcade, in which you must fight all eight warriors, and in a nice touch if the character lost on the show, his final boss is the warrior who defeated him. There's also a Survival Mode in which enemies are weaker and you must see how many of them you can defeat before you die. Survival Slice is similar except body parts are much more likely to go flying. Battle can be played with just one human player or two, and is a single match which can be set for up to five rounds. There is a DLC pack for an extra fiver that adds a mode called "Skirmish," which is a team battle of variable size. Once your first fighter dies, the 2nd man on your roster shows up, then the third, and you fight until one team is dead. It's a neat addition but unfortunately, you can't play it against the computer, only another human player locally or online.
The warriors are the Apache, the Roman Centurion, the Knight, the Ninja, the Pirate, the Samurai, the Spartan and the Viking, all present with signature weapons and unlockable alternatives for each weapon and costume or armor. If you download the DLC you also have access to the Shaolin Monk, the Indian Rajput, and the African Zande warrior. The combat is nice and violent; a stray projectile to the head can cause a single-hit kill, limbs can be crippled or amputated, and heads can go rolling. You can also cause a "final strike" if your foe is low on health by landing a special attack. Though each character has only one final strike, they all look nice and brutal and combined with the "normal" deaths, ragdoll physics and possible dismemberment of your defeated enemy, you shouldn't become tired of killing your foes over and over again.
Your opponent's final moments wouldn't mean much if the game leading up to them weren't fun, but in this case, it is. Unlike many of the fighters out there, you're not constantly stuck gazing longingly into your opponent's eyes and are free to run around the arena. You'll appreciate the freedom because in this game, battle is all about timing and planning your attack. If you mistime your dodge or parry, or try to button-mash your way to an easy kill, you could find yourself on the receiving end of a Viking axe or an Apache four-hit flurry. You have access to four types of attacks: short, medium and long range as well as your special, and the choice of which one to employ adds depth and excitement to each battle. The game advises you against projectiles at short range, but sometimes it's a good idea to mislead your opponent by burying an arrow or a throwing spear in his forehead when he draws close.
As with any fun fighting game, multiplayer is a must. You can battle locally with another person, or you can go online to play single matches or tournaments. Tournaments are handled interestingly; there's a first round, semifinal and final round, but you don't have to play them all in one sitting. You can win your first two, then go have a sandwich, go to work, get married, fall in some ice and be cryogenically frozen, then come back in the year 3016 and you'll still be eligible for the final round. The game pairs you up with other players at the same tier, so provided you can find a match you're free to pursue the championship at your leisure. It's pretty sweet but the online can be somewhat dead at times.
The multiplayer can be really fun; I've had some excellent (and close) online matches, but sometimes you might find yourself being annihilated simply because a more experienced player has learned some tricks and nuances with a certain character that you haven't. The ninja, for example, is überfast, and can land a four-hit combo against a Spartan's shield and dodge away before the slower warrior can possibly counter. Then he can just repeat until the Spartan's stamina is depleted and can no longer block. This leads to some undeserved and cheap victories for the ninja. Also, pirates have a dodge move that players can spam constantly, and since every character is invincible while dodging this makes the pirate practically immortal with just a miniscule fraction of a second in which he can be hit. There are plenty of other problems, such as the damage a four-hit combo from a guerrila can do to a Champion's health even when completely blocked by a shield. They are not obvious if you've never run into players who have discovered these tricks, or never discovered them on your own, but once you know about them the online becomes an uninteresting contest of who can out-cheat whom.
As is, Deadliest Warrior is a good game, but until the exploitable flaws are fixed it will never be great because only the single player modes will keep you interested. The computer on Deadliest is a worthy opponent, and for the most part, fights fair. It isn't the fault of the developers that players use cheap shots to climb the leaderboards, but it is their fault that those cheap shots exist in the first place.
(This review was edited from an earlier version. Although I did write it myself, I did not discover the character imbalances on my own; I owe that to a user named "Vladimir Romanov." Thanks Vlad!)