Post by Hawk Hart on Dec 12, 2009 18:42:55 GMT -5
I don't want to say that Celebrity Deathmatch was a staple of my childhood but damn did I love that show. I saw every episode, when they debuted, during the first run. Yeah, I was THAT into it. I always wanted Celebrity Deathmatch figures so I could make my very own fights at home, so you can imagine how excited I was when I found out way back in 2003 that Gotham Games was creating a game based on one of my favorite shows. I begged my Mom to buy me the game but living in Wyoming, with no Gamestops nearby, and a Wal Mart that likes censorship, I was SOL. I finally secured a copy of this game today and boy am I glad I couldn't get it 6 years ago. It's with great displeasure, I bring to you, my review for Celebrity Deathmatch on the Playstation 2.
So I pop the game and I get a little bit excited. I mean honestly, one of the first things you see is the old "It's Just Clay" warning with the word "Polygons" instead. Then, you get to the main menu and get Nick and Johnny bantering like what you'd expect from these characters, then it's all downhill. The closest thing we get to a story is the episode mode. Anyway, the general jist is you select an episode, six in total, each made up of 3 matches, choose the fighter you want out of the pre-selected celebs and then, in the words of Referee Mills Lane "Let's Get It On!"
Before every fight, you get a short cutscene with Nick and Johnny followed by short intros for the fights and Mills Lane, and then a short match. Honestly, these matches are SHORT. I finished six episodes with three matches per episode in one hour and eight minutes and that includes a five minute break where I took my trash out and used the bathroom. The length wouldn't be a problem if there was some replay value to it, but there really isn't. At no point during any of the fights did I think "Hey, that was fun, I want to play this fight again." Not once. Plus, at some points it's almost like the dev team is daring you to keep playing. Seriously, you finish an episode and get taken all the way back to the "Press Start Button" title screen. It's like they're saying, "Hey, did you like that? Well we dare ya to try it some more!" It was a dare I seriously considered not taking several times.
What made me consider hanging it up? The matches themselves we just so unrelentingly, f***ing repetitive that it almost drove me insane. The matches consist of shitty, unfocused attacks mostly based on the public perception of the celebrities in question and terrible puns. I've never seen cock/banana jokes thrown into anything more than when I saw during Ron Jeremy fights. And to cap it all off, you can win a fight by just spamming one move over and over and over. I was playing as Mr. T and I won a fight by knocking Carrot Top down and kicking him in the f***ing nuts repeatedly. I repeat, I WON a fight, as Mr. T, by kicking CARROT TOP in the NUTS for three solid minutes. I support anyone wanting to kick Carrot Top right in the balls, but honestly, it shouldn't have been that easy to win. In terms of attacks though, to be quite honest, some of the special attacks/KILLS are kinda cool. I rather enjoyed ripping off Cindy Margolis' legs before kicking her in the mouth. I wish I could've seen some more special attacks but I have no clue how to do them. I looked in the booklet and everything, all that gives you is a controller layout, but they don't tell you what any of the f***ing buttons do. It's like putting someone in a tank and expecting them to know what the hell they're doing. Eventually I gave up and just hit all the buttons at once and it WORKED. Only once though.
Outside of the single special attack I witnessed, the only other redeeming attacks I saw were the finishes aka Kills. The only big problem I saw was that I saw all the kills too much. I mean really, you get to play a select few celebs in the short episode mode, you'd think they'd have more than one kill per person. But no, you get one. And you better hope you like it because playing through this marathon of mind rape, you'll see them over and over again. Another gripe I have is that sometimes regular attacks look more gruesome than kills, case in point being Dennis Rodman. I was playing as "Rodzilla" against one of the boys from N*Sync (it doesn't matter which one, they all have the same attacks) when I ripped his head off. Once again, to emphasize, in the middle of the fight I RIPPED HIS f***ING HEAD OFF. Not only that, I dribbled it and then put it back on. I wouldn't have a problem with that but Rodman's finish is ripping his opponents head off, dribbling it, then dunking it. What. The. f***?! If he was just gonna rip his head off anyway, why did he put it back in the middle of the fight? He could've saved us all some time and effort. I think all that rainbow hair dye finally got to "The Worm."
If you're looking at the overall presentation, it's not good. At all. The health bars aren't very intrusive but the giant MTV logos that tell you how you're progressing towards a special move are very distracting. Then you have the graphics themselves. Anyone who remembers the show remembers the off kilter charm of the claymation designs but those are far away from here. It's like everything good about the design of the original show got dropped and lost in a pile of boring polygons. Nothing really looks good, not the arenas, not the fighters, the moves, anything. Plus, the turd olive on this shit sandwich is the voice acting. 99% of the celebrity voices are no where near what they're supposed to be. At least on the show if a voice isn't right, you can tell they tried but this just sounds like they gave bums off the streets sandwiches in exchange for 30 minutes of "acting." Seriously, my drunken Mr. T impression is light years better than this parade of bullf*** and it's AWFUL. Also, you'd think that a game about a show about murdering people in horrifying ways would allow you to throw someone in one of the pits of lava or acid that surround the ring. Yeah, that's right, there are arenas that have ACID and LAVA and you can't use it. I was fine with not being able to leave the more normal rings but I wanna throw Shannon Doherty in a pit of acid god damnit!
The exhibition mode is just more of the same so the only other mode is the Create a Celebrity and it's incredibly limited. I'm talking Backyard Wrestling Limited, except worse. You get to choose from very generic templates that include a GI, a wife beater, a millionaire (but not his wife), a skater, a tool, and the return of AFRO DESTROYER! I guess this game has more in common with BYW than we thought.
Bottom line, this game blows. Hard. I'm talking hurricane level blowing. Avoid it at all costs.
I give it a 1 out of 5.
So I pop the game and I get a little bit excited. I mean honestly, one of the first things you see is the old "It's Just Clay" warning with the word "Polygons" instead. Then, you get to the main menu and get Nick and Johnny bantering like what you'd expect from these characters, then it's all downhill. The closest thing we get to a story is the episode mode. Anyway, the general jist is you select an episode, six in total, each made up of 3 matches, choose the fighter you want out of the pre-selected celebs and then, in the words of Referee Mills Lane "Let's Get It On!"
Before every fight, you get a short cutscene with Nick and Johnny followed by short intros for the fights and Mills Lane, and then a short match. Honestly, these matches are SHORT. I finished six episodes with three matches per episode in one hour and eight minutes and that includes a five minute break where I took my trash out and used the bathroom. The length wouldn't be a problem if there was some replay value to it, but there really isn't. At no point during any of the fights did I think "Hey, that was fun, I want to play this fight again." Not once. Plus, at some points it's almost like the dev team is daring you to keep playing. Seriously, you finish an episode and get taken all the way back to the "Press Start Button" title screen. It's like they're saying, "Hey, did you like that? Well we dare ya to try it some more!" It was a dare I seriously considered not taking several times.
What made me consider hanging it up? The matches themselves we just so unrelentingly, f***ing repetitive that it almost drove me insane. The matches consist of shitty, unfocused attacks mostly based on the public perception of the celebrities in question and terrible puns. I've never seen cock/banana jokes thrown into anything more than when I saw during Ron Jeremy fights. And to cap it all off, you can win a fight by just spamming one move over and over and over. I was playing as Mr. T and I won a fight by knocking Carrot Top down and kicking him in the f***ing nuts repeatedly. I repeat, I WON a fight, as Mr. T, by kicking CARROT TOP in the NUTS for three solid minutes. I support anyone wanting to kick Carrot Top right in the balls, but honestly, it shouldn't have been that easy to win. In terms of attacks though, to be quite honest, some of the special attacks/KILLS are kinda cool. I rather enjoyed ripping off Cindy Margolis' legs before kicking her in the mouth. I wish I could've seen some more special attacks but I have no clue how to do them. I looked in the booklet and everything, all that gives you is a controller layout, but they don't tell you what any of the f***ing buttons do. It's like putting someone in a tank and expecting them to know what the hell they're doing. Eventually I gave up and just hit all the buttons at once and it WORKED. Only once though.
Outside of the single special attack I witnessed, the only other redeeming attacks I saw were the finishes aka Kills. The only big problem I saw was that I saw all the kills too much. I mean really, you get to play a select few celebs in the short episode mode, you'd think they'd have more than one kill per person. But no, you get one. And you better hope you like it because playing through this marathon of mind rape, you'll see them over and over again. Another gripe I have is that sometimes regular attacks look more gruesome than kills, case in point being Dennis Rodman. I was playing as "Rodzilla" against one of the boys from N*Sync (it doesn't matter which one, they all have the same attacks) when I ripped his head off. Once again, to emphasize, in the middle of the fight I RIPPED HIS f***ING HEAD OFF. Not only that, I dribbled it and then put it back on. I wouldn't have a problem with that but Rodman's finish is ripping his opponents head off, dribbling it, then dunking it. What. The. f***?! If he was just gonna rip his head off anyway, why did he put it back in the middle of the fight? He could've saved us all some time and effort. I think all that rainbow hair dye finally got to "The Worm."
If you're looking at the overall presentation, it's not good. At all. The health bars aren't very intrusive but the giant MTV logos that tell you how you're progressing towards a special move are very distracting. Then you have the graphics themselves. Anyone who remembers the show remembers the off kilter charm of the claymation designs but those are far away from here. It's like everything good about the design of the original show got dropped and lost in a pile of boring polygons. Nothing really looks good, not the arenas, not the fighters, the moves, anything. Plus, the turd olive on this shit sandwich is the voice acting. 99% of the celebrity voices are no where near what they're supposed to be. At least on the show if a voice isn't right, you can tell they tried but this just sounds like they gave bums off the streets sandwiches in exchange for 30 minutes of "acting." Seriously, my drunken Mr. T impression is light years better than this parade of bullf*** and it's AWFUL. Also, you'd think that a game about a show about murdering people in horrifying ways would allow you to throw someone in one of the pits of lava or acid that surround the ring. Yeah, that's right, there are arenas that have ACID and LAVA and you can't use it. I was fine with not being able to leave the more normal rings but I wanna throw Shannon Doherty in a pit of acid god damnit!
The exhibition mode is just more of the same so the only other mode is the Create a Celebrity and it's incredibly limited. I'm talking Backyard Wrestling Limited, except worse. You get to choose from very generic templates that include a GI, a wife beater, a millionaire (but not his wife), a skater, a tool, and the return of AFRO DESTROYER! I guess this game has more in common with BYW than we thought.
Bottom line, this game blows. Hard. I'm talking hurricane level blowing. Avoid it at all costs.
I give it a 1 out of 5.
