Last time, I reviewed a game based on my favorite movie, so
I think this week it would make sense to talk about my favorite TV show. Now, I
have always been a fan of fantasy fights and it’s obvious that a lot of other
people are too, shown by the amazing popularity of things such as Death Battle
or the Epic Rap Battles of History (and if you like those things, check out the
Geeks Versus Nerds podcast, I’ve been in a few shows). But I don’t think anyone
has done it better than MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch. The jokes, the match-ups,
the violence, the animation: I would not change one thing about the original
series. Even after it was cancelled in 2002, people still wanted to see Celebrities
pound on each other, so about a year later, the Celebrity Deathmatch video game
was released to the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox (which is the version I
will be playing).
Celebrity Deathmatch was a clay animated TV show, and that alone
gave it a lot of personality. This game is instead done with polygons and though
this is disappointing (since “Clay Fighters” existed on the SNES), it is
understandable. Despite this, do the graphics do the show justice? Well the
character models do look accurate, but the graphics quality is terrible! I
would assume that this game was on the N64 by looking at it. Blood gets added
to the fighters as they get injured, but it’s not impressive since I know PS1
games that could do that.
Likewise, the game is not fun to listen to. In the show,
there is often music playing in the background relevant to whichever fighter is
featured or what they’re doing. Take Garth Brooks for example, who had generic
country music playing when he was dominating, or whenever Alfred Hitchcock
spoke there was an ominous track in the background. Of course it might be too
hard to fit that into a video game, but they honestly didn’t even try. There is
no music for the fights and it makes the game much more boring.
While I’m talking about what you hear, a lot of the show’s
humor came from dialog: the way Nick and Johnny described the fight or how the
two fighters taunted each other. This game tried to recapture that, but utterly
failed. Nick, Johnny and some of the fighters have a few selected phrases that
come up from time to time, but you will quickly be tired of hearing them, even
though it can take a long time between quips. At least the voice actors do a
decent enough job.
I’m at a loss to how to explain the game play, but I can say
“good” wouldn’t be my first choice. The game is a 3D roaming fighter, so you’ll
walk around and punch the enemy if you feel like it. The controls are simple
and easy to learn and there are no complex “street fighter” like combos, but
that’s reflective of the show, where they just kind of smacked each other
around. The problem is it feels incredibly stiff! Half the time you’ll either
be trying to hit the enemy unsuccessfully thanks to the game’s poor hit
detection, trying to stand up from a cheap combo or just trying to make the
buttons work the way they should. Playing against a human player is a lot less
frustrating (since it evens things), but it needs a lot of improvement before
it would be fun.
The game also has weapons and the ability to knock off enemy
libs to handicap them (the latter has NEVER happened for me no matter how I
tried), which were both common themes of the show. The weapons rarely show up
in the ring, and when they do, they tend to disappear just as quickly. The game
play is just one big step away from being a button mashing game.
Celebrity Deathmatch represents one of the reasons why I
rarely talk about bad games: it’s hard to explain why this game doesn’t work
the way it does without going into detail. Long story short: the TV show did
not translate well to video games. I appreciate the attempt made by developer
Big Ape Production and publisher Gotham Games, but some things (like the moment
specific audio and moves) couldn’t be done, and when they tried to do it (like
the simple smacking), it failed and made for boring game play. It can be good
for a laugh among friends, but trying to play this by yourself is just a test
to get through the whole half hour of stuff you can actually do. Just watch the
show on YouTube instead. I give Celebrity Deathmatch for the Xbox 3.5 levels
out of 10.
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