Ever wondered who would win a fight between a Spartan and a Pirate or perhaps a Viking against a Samurai? Well with Deadliest Warrior: The Game you can now find out!
Deadliest Warrior started life as a television program in the states and tried to show viewers the possible outcome of a battle between two types of historical warriors by researching their weapons and fighting styles. Deadliest Warrior: The Game tries to bring this same concept to the video game scene. You have the option of choosing from eight different fighters from all over the globe and from different time periods ranging from the Samurai of Japan to the Spartans of ancient Greece. The game has two different game modes, single player and multiplayer. The single player mode sees you battle the other warriors including a doppelgänger of whatever fighter you chose. The multiplayer is like any other standard fighter and has you queue up waiting for an opponent.
The controls in Deadliest Warrior are quite awkward to say the least and when you find yourself accidentally turning your back to your opponent and having your arm chopped off it doesn’t help. One thing you need to get used to quite quickly in Deadliest Warrior is you are going to lose a lot of arms, legs and heads (yes your head!). As you can imagine with the loss of all your limbs there is going to be blood, lots and lots of it. Battles can last as little as three seconds or carry on for ages depending how good you are defending and parrying attacks. Playing as the Pirate, there have been battles where I have simply pulled out my gun and shot my opponent right between the eyes for a swift victory and sadly had the same happen to me. This frustrated me a few times, but as this game is looking to bring a sense of realism to the fighting genre I guess it can be excused.
Your character carries a close, mid and long range weapon while fighting and you are able to unlock more of these by fulfilling certain requirements. Most of these are to simply complete the single player mode with each character on the different difficulties, Normal, Hard and Deadliest but there are other ways you can unlock weapons and armour. Half way through the single player matches you are thrown into a small room with pigs hanging from meat hooks and you must slice and dice all of them to the ground within the time limit. It’s not terribly difficult and gives you a much rest from the standard battles.
One of the strangest things I noticed in Deadliest Warrior was the lack of music. The title has a little track set on repeat but in the battles you don’t hear anything apart from the grunts and groans on the warriors. Maybe I’m being a little picky but I enjoy a nice fast paced beat in the background when I’m (trying) to kick my opponent’s behind! Sadly the sound effects don’t really make up for lack of music either and the warriors have very little to say to taunt the enemy or express victory. There is not much to say about the graphics as they are pretty mediocre for an arcade titles but the blood effects are quite nice.
If you are a hardcore fighting game fan then Deadliest Warrior probably isn’t for you. It feels very clunky at times and will be short lived as the unlockables can be obtained in just a few hours. Also, as with a lot of arcade titles, the multiplayer is poorly populated and can leave you waiting a while for an opponent. Take my advice and spend your 800 Microsoft Points elsewhere.
