Review #449: War Gods

 A game that raises a lot of questions. Not good questions, but questions non the less.

 What is an intro? What is a Mode? What is an ending? What is a combo? What is a movelist? Such are the questions that this game raises and doesn't answer. Welcome to War Gods, a fighting game released to test the waters before fully committing to bringing Mortal Kombat into the third dimension. It has blood, it has fatalities and it has terrible pseudo-realistic character designs but it's no Mortal Kombat.

 The game has a set-up involving 10 pieces of an orb that turned 10 humans into gods and blah blah blah, it's not interesting nor does it concern us, for even your reward upon finishing the game is a measly 3-paragraph long ending text. Lame. There're 10 terrible looking characters as well as 2 even worse-looking bosses(Which you can play as by inputting a code) that are the cheapest you'll ever play against. You thought Goro, Shao Kang or even Rugal were bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. The game has a grand total of 1 mode, an Arcade Ladder, or 2 if you count pressing the Start button on a second controller to battle against another player, as well as an options screen. Lamer.

 The game's crowning achievement is looking worse than it plays. Character models look terrible, warp and twist weirdly when doing victory poses and having some of the stiffest animations ever. Each character has a decent, albeit a bit small, assortment of special moves as well as a single 10-hit combo. Producing combos in this game is devoid of any freedom of creativity, so don't expect much out of the engine. And if you want to see a movelist, tough luck, even the game's instruction manual refuses to aid you, so it's gonna take a trip to GameFaqs. Lameeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 As for the game's key mechanics, there's a 3D button that let's you move around freely, which is a bit wonky, Left and Right rolls, which come out a bit too slow, as well as a shove move, by double tapping the block button, that breaks guards... but why would you if grabs deal more damage and come out quicker? There's also a single fatality for each combatant, but they are relatively good looking, surprisingly, most fit the character's respective deity theme pretty well.

 War Gods is pretty bad. Like really, really bad. I don't think I've a single positive thing to say about it... except maybe that it's not broken. Everything works as intended, collision detection is fine and... well, it's not broken. But it's devoid of good, fun mechanics, the overall aesthetics are lame, it lacks fluff to make it worth playing the game after you finished the arcade ladder one.... it doesn't have anything that other games don't do better. I still have a rather soft spot for War Gods in my heart due to nostalgia, but if you take the rose-tinted glasses off there's nothing worth looking at in there.
 3.0 out of 10