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Review: Fatal Fury 2 (Sega Genesis) |
Fatal Fury 2. It’ll grow hair on your chest, make you a real man and impress the girls as you show them your mad Cheng Shinzan skills. Quite possibly the apex of video game “cool”, Fatal Fury 2 will make you weep like a girl, regardless of sex, once you play it for the first (or last) time and realize all I said above was bullshit. I’m such a rebel!
I’m proud to say that Fatal Fury 2 fits well among it’s peers. It’s as delightfully zany as the original, complete with dual lame (I was supposed to write “lane” but found the typo hilarious) fighting. “Hey, if it plays like ass the first time around, might as well leave it be!” I often admire myself in mirror for using such clever sarcasm. Gameplay mechanics remain the same. This sequel is what the first installment should have been, for you see, all that was done was a distribution of new moves and an expanded cast of what will later become all-star greats, like Cheng Shinzan. Although other characters will never come close to tasting the popularity he’s attained, Fatal Fury 2 also marks the first appearance of Mai Shiranui, Wolfgang Krauser and some other little nosebleeds.
It’s disappointing when a sequel doesn’t innovate or expands in any significant way. FF2 just disappointed me in this aspect, as there was nothing drastically new, apart from the new characters and new presentation. That includes the new backgrounds and music, which are all great of course, though the game no longer takes place solely in Southtown. That town was the bomb. You’ll fight the full roster in one player mode, with a set number of continues at your disposition. I find that a bit excessive, it’s not necessary to limit the player’s continues, that’s what arcades and quarters are for. The versus mode comes as a mandatory addition, but survival mode is a more than a welcome addition. Each player picks 6 characters, and last one standing wins. It’s sad that I’ve not yet found pleasure in the Fatal Fury series, as any mode cannot mask the battle mechanics that are bland and basic. The damage is still somewhat wacky. A rising tackle takes out less than a punch? What, am I missing something? Is Terry not thrusting is whole body upwards with great force? It makes no sense, I know. That’s not all though… There are certain imbalances that make this game a loser in terms of all around playability. The character Big Bear is extremely vulnerable to fireballs, launching projectiles of varying speed will screw this big lug over, for even changing lanes won’t stop the other player from repeating the same bullshit. I should know, I did this to him constantly. But what strokes me the wrong way is that Axel Hawk gets an anti-projectile move. He’s not even as plump as Big Bear, for lack of a better word. Other fighters like Mai, get a lane switching attack so effective it can be abused over and over.
The AI in the game doesn’t help much either. It’s actually worse this time around. I never had to intensely cheese the CPU opponent to death since I could flip them around like boogers most of the time. And seeing them taunting too often doesn’t help. I can be in the middle of a match with my health bar clearly untouched and the opponent down to his last scrap and he’ll start messing with his hair or say something stupid. I like to make them shut up by applying my fists of fury at the appropriate places.
I can hear your questions already. Why is it that I’ve given all the Fatal Fury’s lame scores of roughly the same % ? This is where I offer a short bit of insight on my way of seeing things… the original Fatal Fury trilogy is pretty much all the same. Each new installment offers mostly visual and audio improvements. New characters are a bonus, considering the game plays the same each time. Fatal Fury is a game series that despite not being fantastic, lived on. It’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly good either. It’s in that hazy zone where the good and bad are nearly identical. On one hand, the graphics and sound are pretty good, (FF2’s audio and backgrounds must have been really good, because all of it was pretty much recycled in FF Special) and on the other, the gameplay is not all that great, even shall we say, gimmicky.
I’ll leave it at that, for fear of being pursued by the Cheng Shinzan fan club for dissing Fatal Fury. And for being so flamboyantly handsome.
