 |
Review: Glove on Fight [PC] |
Thank you Sub. We lub u.
Ah, Glove on Fight. Just what is there to say about it? Nearly a year after its original release (March 2002), I still find myself, time after time, turning on this game and playing a couple of rounds. I’ll stop for a couple weeks, then I’ll come back to it time an again every time I get bored with the games I’m playing. When I do so in the presence of others, I’m presented with the question that I myself ask here: Why the hell are you still playing this? I don’t know. I’ve long since seen everything it has to offer. It’s hardly the deepest game. But man, is it ever good at entertaining me.
Glove on Fight is another doujin game with another interesting history. A ways back, the original Glove on Fight Flash video was released. This video wasn’t just a movie, it was a hypothetical fighting game that didn’t actually exist, but could have fooled anyone who watched the video. The premise was this: a bunch of popular female characters were in the possession of gloves. From there we have the simple logical connection between gloves and boxing. The results were set to background music from Initial D, Another video was released, and popularity for the piece apparently grew. From there, Watanabe Productions, our buddies who gave us Queen of Heart, Melty Blood and so on, announced Glove On Fight for March 2002 as a collaborative project with the authors of the original flash, (Shunpu-Tei-Ko-Bo according to the title screen). Now, I could be wrong with all this, but this is my guess, seeing as Shunpu-Tei-Ko-Bo has since gone on to make another hypothetical game project (Ragnarok Battle Online),one that I’m pretty sure was not intended to really be made into a game either. Hence, this game, and the most awful pun on an already Engrish title I’ve ever seen (see Groove on Fight), were born.
I haven’t touched the graphics yet, and they are by far the most immediately noticeable point of the game. The characters are from various places: Ayu (made the game’s main character and the one with the most orthodox play style) and Akiko are from the game Kanon; Ciel and Satsuki are from Tsuikihime, another popular game (see Melty Blood); Digi Charat is the definition of evil personified and I hear there’s an anime series about her to boot; Ecoco is a mascot for an Japanese energy company. There are others, 8 total, but that sentence was getting long. They are all made squatty, almost SD versions of their former selves. It’s more, however, than just drawing their proportions all weird and tiny. The characters are… round. Their heads are circles, hands ovals, etc, etc. To see them in motion is still more bizarre. Their body parts are individual sprites like in, say, the Gundam Battle Assault games. The sprites are extremely clean and polished-looking, and their movement is about as natural looking as these scary lil’ people are ever going to look. Some moves even have X-rays popping up in the background of the opponent’s bones being broken. The presentation, oddly enough, shamelessly rips SF3: 3rd Strike, down to having pseudo-rap interludes post-fight. The eye for both detail and parody that the designers have is amazing. It’s easily some of the most creative, fascinating 2D I’ve ever seen used in a videogame. I’ve never seen anything like it and I don’t think that I will for a long time.
Moving on, after the initial shock and amazement of the graphics, you may be somewhat concerned with the audio. The sound effects are solid, and are for the most part whacks, bangs and crashes, perfectly appropriate for this deranged cartoon of a game. The music is, similarly, boppy, happy stuff, with occasional vocals. Vocals ingame are always kind of iffy because they tend to force you to pay attention to them, and personally, I crank the volume down when Ayu’s stage comes up. In any case, it’s not Sonic R painful, so don’t worry about, like, your ears starting to bleed and your brain leaking out of them ’cause that won’t happen.
So, then, how does this game play? See, that’s the thing. This game is not only a game that LOOKS extremely untraditional, it plays that way too. First and foremost, all but two characters are unable to jump, and none are blessed with the traditional, controllable, fighting game jump. Glove on Fight is all about the ground game and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. There are three buttons; light attack, hard attack, and dodge. Ciel gets to parry on top of that. No combos aside from the odd stun attack. There are supers and special moves, though special moves are pretty few. Most notable are the incredibly strange supers, the highlight of the original flash video. Moves you can expect do to include having a giant robot take (unblockable!) machine gun shots at the enemy, running the enemy over with the car from Initial D, and, for the Digi Charat fans out there, throwing Gema at people. What the game comes down to, in any case, is careful placement of high and low, slow and fast attacks, knowing when to move out, when to dodge, and eventually, faking out the opponent into a big hit. Behind that simple exterior, what you’ve really got here is a very competent, fairly deep, mind game. Mind you, it’s certainly not for everybody. But it never intended to be.
As far as extras and replay value, I can pretty honestly say there isn’t much. Due to the extremely small number of characters, making 4 characters unlockable probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. But hey, if unlocking characters is your thing, uh… have at it. Other than that, about all you’ve got here is some hilarious ending pictures for the characters, and a lifebars-off mode, called Real Fight. I’ve beaten the game with all characters on maximum difficulty. I don’t know what exactly I did to get Real Fight unlocked, but I’d say doing what I did is a fair bet. There is, however, the ubiquitous replay option. This being a PC game, you can go out on the net and check out qohmovie.net for match replays. I wish Watanabe would incorporate a better system of playing replays, but as it is you’re stuck with what’s here. Download a replay, change the filename to one that’s supported by the system, run the game and view. Don’t expect any mega-ultra-AHVB-death combos though.
There have been complaints that this game hasn’t got the depth and longevity that the Queen of Heart series and its spiritual successor Melty Blood possess. Well the complainers are right, it doesn’t. Glove On Fight is entirely its own thing, something QoH and MB, fantastic games as they are, can’t really say. That’s why I love GOF as much as I do. There is nothing like it, anywhere. It is a freak among videogames. Not the kind of freak you hide underneath the table in your home and hope people don’t see it, like say the extensive collection of Acclaim/LJN NES games that you bought out of stupidity in your youth. It’s a beautiful, wonderful freak, and its utter quirkiness is what makes it so likable. I really hope Watanabe follows up on its promise of a sequel in the ending credits. Highly recommended; for the open-minded and/or insane exclusively.
