Old School Beatem Up, nothing like it anymore.
1.) Double Dragon with Super Double Dragon probably being the best
2.) Final Fight
3.) Streets of Rage
4.) And Fighting Force
There is nothing in the world as satisfying as cracking baddies upside the head with one of your friends in the same room. With the invention of xbox live, we have lost that visceral feeling of camaraderie with friends, roaming the streets whupping some virtual thug behind. Fighting Force was the last hurrah in my opinion.
Gameplay: Mixed bag here. There was some cheap blocking by enemies that seemed to never die. Sometimes you could barely target an enemy and land a hit. The friendly fire did suck the first few times you played. Some of the bosses, particularly in the navy shipyard level were excessively cheap to the point you cant avoid the attacks, plus they hit like a freight train.
Now the bad is over, lets speak on the good.
There were a lot of moves you could do in theory. Punch, kick, jump (kick) backhand attack. Grabs with 4 different outcomes and levels of damage. You could for instance with Mace hit a bad guy a few times until he or she is stunned, grab him/her and lay a few good slaps followed by a fierce Judo takedown.
But my favorite feature was that almost anything could be used as a weapon. Cars could be destroyed and engines picked up (no matter how unbelievable) and tossed. Also tires fell off, sometimes guns popped out of the trunk. Railings could be ripped off in elevators and be used to beat people senseless. Fire equipment could be smashed open and used to beat people. Enemies would bring guns and bats and knives galore to you once you disarm them. You can smash open water coolers and get sharp objects from that. You could throw your empty gun just for good measure at the enemy. Hell I killed the last boss with an empty gun once.
In the park giant rocks are laying around to crush sleeping bums, who happen to be enemies. Motorcycles hit the walls after trying to run you over, and they turn into scrap metal which you can beat people with again.
In construction filled levels there are concrete slabs, iron beams, barrels, just so much. Bottles can be found anywhere, and the most pleasing feature of them is if they havent been used they smash into a million pieces and make a satisfying sound. Ahhh... Heck you can even kick chairs around at enemies in one lab level near some workstations. The only thing that sucks is in the last level there are almost no weapons and the enemies are the hardest.
Graphics: Even for the time, the graphics were rather jagged and sloppy polygons. A lot of rendering errors took place, and cutscenes were few and dull. Sure it was... ok ... lets say, but too many jaggies.
Sound: Sound, well there was some cheesy fighting type music but nothing special. The gunshots in the background in slum levels were nice for the atmosphere. Cars would burn out, trains would creak as they flew by. Not horrid, but not great.
Value : Lets just say I probably beat Super Double Dragon over 20 times. I did that with this on Hard. So at 3 hours a pop, I probably dumped 60ish hours into the game, you can't go wrong with beatemups just to beat up people, not when there are so many weapons to use.
Reviewer's Tilt : What more can I say, besides some of the cheapness of enemies and crummy controls occaisonally, the essence of beatem up goodness is this game. Weapons + you + thugs = good time. Plain and simple, the last good beatem up game for almost a decade now. Providing that the game isnt made of red and green boxes and blips for sound, I can withstand that for great beatem up game play, which is what Fighting Force Delivers.