Fright Fight

It's no secret that my favorite fighting game theme is "goofy horror", where standard horror monsters and tropes are played with to an extent where they still definitely fit square in the horror theme but are also comical and visually tantalizing. The Darkstalkers series, Skullgirls, the upcoming Chainsaw Incident, and to a lesser extent even some of the Bleach fighting games all fit this mold and all have an amazing aesthetic.

When I had just picked up an OUYA, I'd heard of a new game that had been on mobile for a while that was being touted as "Smash Bros. meets Darkstalkers". Well I love the shit out of both of those things, so with such a comparison anything less than awesome would be disappointing. Maybe it's my fault for setting my expectations too high, because when they finally did roll out the product on OUYA, I was nearly in tears as to how boring Fright Fight really is. But it's more than just boring... it's a disaster of epic proportions.

Let's start with aesthetic basics, which what drew my eye initially. The characters and background (just the one) are all nicely rendered, but flat-out boring. None of the playable monsters are really at all interesting, save for Hugo the yeti, who sports a boss gauntlet on one arm, and even then, he lacks the charm of say, Darkstalkers' Sasquatch. Actually the entire cast of four(?!) characters are devoid of anything resembling personality. No voice acting, no story, no quirks in animation or anything to suggest that you're controlling anything more mindless mannequin that happens to resemble a monster. You've got the aforementioned Hugo, Carmilla the vampiress, who is pretty standard for non-sexy vampiresses, Grim the Reaper (how original), and Kahn, a werewolf in blue jeans.

Further compounding how dull the characters are, they have a supremely limited repertoire of attacks. You get two attack buttons, but they literally are the same thing instead of weak/hard or something to that effect. Each character has one combo string: jam attack until you feel like stopping or your character sends out their "unique" combo ender. All of the combos are the same for each character; it's just a standard attack in front until the last blow. The final blow is different for each character, but isn't exactly anything to take interest in and in fact Carmilla's is exactly the same as her charge attack. The charge attack is the solitary special move for each character and while again, different between the characters, it's like everything, incredibly bland, and takes entirely too long to pull off to boot. Unlike a game like Smash where you can manipulate what sort of attack comes out of your character by pointing directions, you literally just get your one combo and your charge move as standard battle fare, plus the first hit of your attack if you jump. You don't even get a crouching attack! All of this congeals together to make the characters feel incredibly same-y even with the few differences that are between them.

Other methods of character control include the standard jump, block, and once you fill up enough "Rage Meter", you can dash. With the Rage Meter you can also pull off a super move-ish attack via the same method as a charge attack, but like everything else, it's boring and doesn't have any oomph. A super move being used should be exciting, it should be something your opponents dread.

Character movement in general feels incredibly unfinished and is about as fine-tuned as a car that's been rusting in the woods for 40 years. All of the characters move at the same sluggish rate and jumps take 2-3 seconds more than they should, with a slow ascent and descent. Essentially everyone feels like they're half-asleep and underwater at the same time. The advertisements for the game boast that it's "fast-paced", and if this is fast, I'd hate to see the developers' idea of "slow".

As for modes, you have the option to play Online (which I unfortunately cannot rate because literally nobody is ever on when I check), as well as a few rudimentary Offline modes. There's a training mode which just plops you and three other CPUs in the same action (Grim does his charge attack, Kahn jumps in place, and Hugo walks back and forth. No matter who you choose, there's never a Carmilla). Unlike even the most simplistic training mode in any fighter, there's literally zero customization to work on your skill. No character change, no character positioning (other than manually pushing/knocking your opponent around), no ability to show damage percentages or hitboxes, no way to change what your opponents do... it's literally the most barebones thing I've seen in a training mode in any game ever.

There's also a Challenge mode which sort of resembles Smash's "Break the Targets", only you aren't really told what you're doing. You're just plopped down in the level and let loose. Finally, there's your couch-gaming "Free For All" mode, which works about as well as everything else in the game (i.e. not very well). There's not even any one-player battle experience, like an arcade mode, a story mode, or even a "I just want to hit one guy and have him hit me back" CPU mode. Apparently there's supposed to be an update with "bots" arriving sometime this month (August 2014), but since the OUYA version's been out since April 1 and the mobile versions out longer, it's inexcusable why such a basic necessity of a fighter isn't in from the start. At least semi-party fighters like Duck Game and Towerfall give you something fun to fart around with on your own.

Then there's the user interface. Yes, I'm devoting an entire paragraph to menus... they're that bad. All of the pre/post match screens are obviously ripped directly from the mobile version and are clunky and janky as hell. Also, when I first got the game, even in the paid version you got pop-ups every time you performed any action to buy something in-game. I don't even understand what any of the crap it's trying to get me to buy (coins and XP and stuff) since it doesn't look like any of it is actually used for anything. When reported, apparently the devs called it a "bug" and yes, it was patched out, but I really can't see how they could have possibly done any testing and not noticed that literally everything you did outside of the actual fight prompted you to spend money. Even if they'd flagged it as having been the full version during testing it would've reared its ugly head. Even now, it still asks you to buy something after every match/training session. Furthermore, the demo is the worst possible incentive to buy the thing - not only is it a timed demo with a cumulative countdown (in other words, once you play it for a total amount of time allotted, you're shut out from playing anymore), but it, well you know... if anyone even plays one round of anything they're going to abstain from buying it. I took the bullet literally so that I could warn away anyone from falling into this digital quagmire.

So yeah, I was extremely hopeful for something good to come of this, and if the developers can ever get around to shaping it up into something even remotely playable, I would be all for it. But as of now, I couldn't even recommend this if it was 99 cents, let alone ten bucks.

Wait... it's $14.99 now?

Shit.