Way of the Warrior: a review by Erin A Fritz

Text by Erin A Fritz <fritz@iastate.edu>

Ok, I've been reading so many posts on WOTW that I'm almost sick of it(the number of posts, not WOTW). I finally played the game and would like to give my honest opinion.

If you remember I started a thread about violence in video games like MK and MKII and now WOTW. I will briefly reiterate. I think it sucks. I don't care for it and I think it is a bad influence for children. These opinions are not up for debate and I will ignore flames or followups.

On the other hand I realize the 3DO is geared towards adults and not children so I fully expect to see that kind of realism and un restrained effort in it's fighting games. I still don't enjoy it and find no thrill in learning how to brutally and uniquly kill in my video games but it is not entirely out of line (since its on the 3DO). Anyway that's not the point of this post which is to review WOTW.

First of all I hate dedicated two player fighting games. I do enjoy alot the streets of Rage style games where you take on many enemies in the the fighting style. But I don't like SFII or MK. SFII is laking in replay to me and MK was to simplistic. Good animation and no diversity, hell they even reuse the characters by changing the colors to make it look like more characters, and all the moves seemed very similar for every player. I didn't buy WOTW for these reasons.

But working at Soft Etc.. alows me to borrow software to play at home and check out for free (in order to stay up on the games we sell). I brought it home with three expectations:

I hate fighting games
Many people criticized it so I would like it less
It's a 3DO game and has more in it than the other fighters so it might be ok

Well my first impression of the intro was "this is pretty neat. Classy. The music fits great. The logo scene and the skull stuff was pretty good." But I have to ask and this is unrelated to WOTW only, why is it that the 3-D rendered graphics we see in all the 3DO games is still captured and digitized? Why can't we for instance see clear defined edges and the 3DO render the graphics of say the mountain fortress as we zoom in? And how about the intro where there is the Dog, Palm tree leaves blowing and the flag in the background with Naught Dog written on it. Why is this digitized? It's not graphic intensive or beyond 3DO's capabilities. I'm beginning to think that digitizing is a short cut to actually rendering something with 3DO. The easy way out to just digitize an image from either an animation (old style) or just digitize a sequence that was rendered by a higher system. Instead of slaving on the 3DO dev system so we get the actual sharp image and true 3D effect.

Ok now the game itself. I want to keep this brief.

Characters are ametureish looking. Definately look like a bunch of college (maybe some in HS) kids filmed.
Some of the costumes are weird unispiring and and goofy. Some look to plain clothesish to be the feircest warriors of them all!
I love the large size of the characters (as opposed to the one inch characters on MK and SFII. anyone can animate a sprited that small to look good, sheesh).Note: I cannot actually animate a sprite of any size at this time so no flames please.
I love that all the characters are different. (not just change in color)
I like the options and main menu screen.
The refs voice was toned down and I don't mind it any more. Actually its ok. The other voices are ok to. None of them are very bad. Some may be questionable (although I have not heard them). And Dragon's voice is not terrible like everyone is saying. The voices are 100's of times better than anything on a comparable fighting game (sound wise and also content).
The backgrounds do not look that real. They do tend to have an ameturish look to them. Cut and paste. But I was emensely happy that they are all full 3D. this is pulled off well and makes up for the other aspect. I would much rather have a 3D look that a flat painting backdrop look. I do think the backgrounds are interesting and inspiring but not polished (this has been brought up alot arleady).
The fighting was simply FUN. I actually liked the fighting part of the game. I think the engine is cool and I have not been biased as I said by SFII controls or style as I never got into the game. But WOTW was just plain fun. I'm sorry others must have been expecting something else and then were let down because the game is fun to me (within the realm of fighting games, which are not high on my list overall).
No collision detection problems at all what so ever.
No problems with controll at all what so ever. Of course I have unscrewed my controllers. Actually the characters were quite easy to have do what ever I wanted (jumping angled, some moves, etc..) I am by no means a pro at the game.
music in the fight is awesome. I have waited for the day that we started getting real music in games and we finnally have it. 3DO is doing it a lot and I love it. It helps this game out a lot.
The character's movements are jerky or shall I say not very smooth. One notable area that looks bad to me is when Shaky Jake spins his staff and we see it in maybe eight positions instead of a flowing circle. I did however notice that after playing a while the frame rate (or smoothness) became less and less important. I don't know why. I just got used to it I guess and it happened pretty quickly. I began to see where having more moves was becoming more important even though I said and still think I would like more smooth animation. It just seems that the game now has much more depth and long term replay value where having less moves and more animation would get old much quicker (sortof like MK).

There are other things to mention but I think those are the main ones and I've been posting for a while so I thought I'd share my opinion before too long a time passed. I think the negative comments are way over rated. I don't know why people would hate the game. To me I would give it a 50/50. This means that it is not a game I want bad. It is good enough to keep in mind if there is nothing better. I also give Monster Manor a 50/50. I give Road Rash a 100, as in I definately want it and like it enough to buy it and keep it. The only reason I give WOTW a 50/50 is because I don't like the fighting game genre very much. I give other fighting games a 00. Anotherwords I have no interest in getting them or playing them. But I do think that WOTW is the best fighting game I've played (Sam show still didn't get me to excited either) and the only one I might get.

And no matter what kind of Vulcan logic you try on me the rating for the game in EGM is way off. It is totally unjustified. I know that having an unfinished copy was one of the reasons but also they are Way off on all there 3DO reviews almost as if to intentionally hurt the 3DO (JPI,etc.). I seriously hope they don't do a rereview of the game because I know they will just make new reasons to justify why they gave it a bad rating the first time and then again(that's twice) shoot it down. I hope they leave it alone. Actually I wish they'd just not review 3DO software anymore.

Anyway there my opinion.

Erin

michel.buffa@cmu.edu