Someone should have taught them the secret of the steel
Written: Jul 01 '04 (Updated Aug 02 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Music,stages,premise
Cons: characters,repetitive,graphics could have been better
The Bottom Line: Barbarian is a decent title that is marred by crap characters. It doesnt have all that much of a single player game, but multi can be fun
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: Barbarian for Xbox |
Given that the Xbox is pretty short on standard fighting games, but has 2 great party fighters in Kung Fu Chaos and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee
, it’s a wonder why more companies don’t try their luck at making a standard fighter instead of giving us more party style fighters. In case the title of this one didn’t clue you in, the theme of this game is barbarians. Well only really one barbarian, but all sorts of other fantasy-esque fighters.
The Barbarian is the revenge seeking Dagan, and he is joined in battle by the Red Sonja-like warrior princess Keela, the hulking escaped convict known only as 21, the colossal mutant ape Mongo, the undead Viking Magnus, the twisted Zombie Stitch, the Middle Eastern Wizard Corath, the plant woman Eyara, the ninja like Phade and the demonic Jinn.
Barbarian is a fighting game for 1 to 4 players. The main single player mode of play is quest. This involves fighting through all of your opponents, with a little story thrown in to keep the interest up. In this mode you earn points that can be used to level up your character’s strength,speed etc.
The other mode of play is Versus mode. This allows you and up to three friends , and if you choose 4 computer controlled ‘thugs’ to scrap it out to see who is the best in battle.
The controls go like this:
X: Attack 1, this is a strong attack, that will only hit one opponent
Y: Attack 2, this is a weaker attack, but it will hit multiple opponents
B: Pick up
A: Jump
L: Block
R: Combo aid/ Special attack
White: Magic Attack, hold down for a more powerful attack
Black: Rune Attack
Y+B: Special Attack
A+X: Push Back
The Combo aid is for beginner players, and lets them use devastating combo’s without needing the exact timing to be perfect.
To gain a special attack, you have to knock your opponent down. Depending on how you knock them down (combo, throw an object etc) you will be granted a certain super move. These range from your weapon doing more damage to being surrounded by spinning blades.
The controls all respond well enough and are easily useable on the default layout of the Xbox controller.
Graphically, the game is quite nice, if nothing revolutionary. The characters all look quite nice, but the Xbox has seen better, but the stages, it has to be said, are brilliant. From Corath’s desert to Dagan’s ruined castle, they all look, and have have an atmosphere to them that is awesome. They also have Dead or Alive style parts where you can hit your opponent through a wall or such to go to a new part of the arena. I have to say Im a particular fan of Mongo’s stage for this, as the all of the parts to his arena give of a great feeling of jungle ruins from the colours to the general layout.
Soundwise, I don’t really have many complaints either. The music gives an attempt at sweeping, Conan like themes, and it doesn’t totally fail either. The music helps add to the great mood that the stages have already established to a pretty good degree, although it is often drowned out by the sounds of things smashing as they are thrown at opponents and such noises.
But is it fun to play I hear you ask, well, yes and no. the game itself, while not being anywhere near as good as Kung Fu Chaos or Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is still pretty good fun if you can get three willing opponents to join in. The single player experience is pretty short lived, so having friends who are game for some swordplay of the barbaric type is a necessity if you want to make owning this game worthwhile.
The game does have quite a few faults, but most of them are most to do with the aesthetics than anything else. First of all, the majority of the characters are crap. When you buy a game called ‘Barbarian’, you expect at least a few Conan types, but Dagan is the only thing that resembles a Barbarian, and even he is flawed. I was willing to let the short hair go, but his sword and axe combo wont cut it. He is a barbarian, all he needs is a sword! And a ruddy big one, not the crappy little thing he has! You could have made another different barbarian type character with an axe and gave him proper axe moves!
No matter how many times me and my friends play this, Phade,21,Eyara and Stitch never get selected. I bought this expecting all sorts of different barbarians and warriors, instead I only found a few characters that lived up to my expectations, and even then Magnus was a bit dumb and Mongo is more like a reject from Congo than Conan. Stitch is just completely out of place, and making Eyara look like, instead of just acting like Swamp Thing could possibly have given her a purpose in the game. When we play the game, there is always a race to get to Dagan and Keela because they are the only two characters that are really in place in the game. I only let Corath away with not getting a slagging because he is cool.
The other fault is that the game just gets pretty repetitive very quickly. While the stages are awesome, its usually quite tough to knock your opponent into the other areas, and the general fighting in the game cant keep up with the atmosphere created by these stages and the music. This should have had clashing swords and epic duels, not just looked like a game where everyone was just mashing buttons. The magic attacks are also pretty worthless. While actually having some variety to the moves is a nice thing, some of them are crap, and just seem out of place.
The sad thing is, that with good characters to accent the levels and music, the game may not have grown as repetitive in multiplayer, but as it is it sadly does. Despite the fact that the music is good, a custom soundtracks option wouldn’t have went amiss either.
At the core of it, Barbarian is a decent game, there just isn’t anything that really escalates it above decent. Sure the stages are good, but who buys a game for the stages?
The idea of the ‘thugs’ was pretty cool as well, and I salute the makers for this gesture, its just a shame they didn’t design their characters better,
At the end of the day, if you like party fighters and didn’t get into Kung Fu or Godzilla, you might like Barbarian. It isn’t a terrible, or even bad game, its just mediocre. A good premise executed, not poorly, but under the standard that it could have, and should have been.
The main reason I bought it was due to me and my friend’s Conan obsession, and seeing as there is actually a real Conan game out now, I may just have to invest in that, and see if it fulfils my Barbaric urges a bit more.
Other Barbaric Reviews
Conan the Barbarian
Review also posted at Dooyoo.co.uk
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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