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Review: One Must Fall Battlegrounds [PC] |
Few may remember the game “One Must Fall 2097″, and with good reason.
It came out almost 10 years ago now, and only appeared on the PC, making it a rather obscure title at the time. But those who do recognize the name usually remember it fondly, not only as one of the best fighting games for the PC ever made, but an impressive fighting game in general even when compared to the titles of other systems. Since that time, fans of the game have eagerly awaited a sequel, and now at long last that wait is over. So does One Must Fall: Battlegrounds live up to its predecessor? Well, in short, yes. But this is something very different from what the original game (or any other fighting game) is like, so it gets a little difficult to directly compare. Regardless, since I’m writing a fighting game review, I’ll have to at least try.
OMF:2097 was set up as a traditional side-view fighter. And while it had a lot of innovative features that made it stand out at the time, it was still operating on the basic format familiar to fighting game fans at the time. OMF:BG changes all that. This game is set in the same storyline continuity, and even features some of the same playable pilots and robots, it is now set in a true 3D environment. And I’m not talking about just using 3D polygon graphics and having a side step button here. I’m talking about something completely new and unique, something that has never been done before. Instead of focusing on taking a 2D fighter and making it “more 3D”, the folks at Diversions got a lot more ambitious and made something brand new from the ground up. As a result, you can move your fighter freely around in 3D arenas, complete with terrain and interactive elements, with the camera angle being a 3rd person shooter type of deal rather than a traditional side-view. Additionally, instead of being limited to two players, this game format allows many combatants to fight each other in the same arena simultaneously.
This aspect of having different numbers of combatants adds a lot of new elements to consider when playing, on top of an already impressive degree of depth. Like in the first game, not only will your fighting style obviously change depending on which robot you use, but different pilots have different levels of statistics, such as strength and agility, which means the same robot will handle slightly differently depending on who’s driving it. But additionally, your fighting tactics will likely change depending on the environment, especially with the arena size. Small arenas will require more hand-to-hand combat, where as in larger arenas ranged attacks may prove to be more useful. On top of that, things can change drastically depending on how many opponents you’re facing off against, as well as what type of game rules you’re playing with. There’s the standard “Last Man Standing”, which is pretty self explanatory and most similar to traditional fighters, where whoever’s left alive at the end wins. But there’s also “Demolishon”, which gives you unlimited lives, and has you simply trying to score the most points within a certain time limit. You can also play each of these game types as teams rather than individually, which again shifts the game’s focus and stategic elements considerably.
If there is one drawback to the ingenuity of this game, it’s the control scheme. It’s not that it’s a bad control scheme, or that it doesn’t work for the game. On the contrary, the game’s control scheme is excellent and works perfectly for the game, once you get used to it. The operative word there is “once”, though. Because this is a completely new type of game, it also controls very differently from anything that’s been made before. This presents a necessarily steep learning curve when starting out, since your past experiences with either fighters or 3D shooters isn’t really going to help you here. The controls consist of only 6 commands in total (4 directions, 2 punches, 2 kicks, jump, and evade), but this is a deceptively simple setup. There are many moves and abilities requiring various combinations of commands, and as in most fighters, you often have to do a lot of things in quick succession with little time to consciously plan things out. This can make the control scheme seem rather overwhelming at first as a result. If you put in the time and effort to learn the game, it certainly pays off in the end. But it can sometimes be a frustrating process along the way, considering there’s so much to learn, and it all has to be done from the ground up.
The game features a nice long one-player game, offering various tournaments to join and participate in. Playing through a tournament will open up new tournaments to play, and also serves the purpose of giving you access to new pilots. There isn’t really too much replay value to the tournaments in general though, since there aren’t individual storylines or endings for different characters or robots, and there isn’t even a high score table like there was in the first game. The real purpose of the one-player game seems to be in unlocking all of the pilots, primarily so that you then have access to using them all in multiplayer. The multiplayer seems to be the primary focus of the game anyway though, and while an internet connection is not specifically required to play the game, it seems to really be crucial in order to get the most out of it. Of additional note in regards to having an internet connection is the importance of patching the game though. The game’s original shipped version was very buggy, and seemed almost like a beta version in terms of having various things missing or not working that were very obviously noticeable. Thankfully, the game has been updated several times since then, and is now very stable. This makes having an internet connection important when playing this game either way though, because the one-player game needs to be patched to be very playable anyway.
So, does it live up to the legend that was OMF:2097? I’d say yes overall, although it’s perhaps not quite the classic that game was. But even though this is a completely different game format, it still does amazingly manage to retain a lot of the general feel of its prequel. There is a noticeable shift from the one-player focus of the first game, to focusing much more heavily on the multiplayer experience here. But you can tell just from playing it that the same people worked on this, and put in a lot of the same type of attention to detail, balance, and depth of gameplay as they put into the first game. If you loved OMF:2097, then you’ll likely love OMF:BG. And even if you didn’t like it, or haven’t heard of it, OMF:BG may still prove to be an enjoyable and worthwhile title to look into. As long as you’re prepared to learn something completely new and different, and you’re likely to find what you get back from OMF:BG will be well worth the effort you put into it.
- SAL
