The mixed-martial-arts genre got its start on the Dreamcast, when Crave and Anchor teamed up to release the first Ultimate Fighting Championship game in 2000. The game did a terrific job at staying somewhat true to the subject matter while delivering a fun, easy-to-learn fighting game. Anchor has since gone on to produce Pride FC for the PlayStation 2, a similar game that refined the genre a bit and featured a few new modes. TDK has since picked up the UFC torch and delivered UFC: Tapout 2 on the Xbox. While the game has a nice look to it and plays just fine, it doesn't really stray too far from the series' original design, and as such it feels like the same thing we've been playing for three years.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship consists of a series of regular pay-per-view events that pit two men against each other in full-on mixed-martial-arts combat in an eight-sided ring known as the octagon. The UFC attracts a number of prominent fighters, and most of the fighters affiliated with it, like Tito Ortiz, Josh Barnett, Dan Severn, Vitor Belfort, and Jens Pulver, are represented in Tapout 2. Many of the game's fighters are locked at the start, but they're easily unlocked in the game's arcade mode. The game's arcade mode simply puts you in fight after fight until you lose. Aside from that, you can set up tournaments, attempt to win and defend the UFC title belts, and train in the game's practice mode.

Tapout 2's gameplay is more or less identical to that of the previous games in the series. Each of the controller's four face buttons controls one of your fighter's limbs, and you can combine button presses to counter incoming strikes, use grappling techniques, and attempt to end the bout with a submission move. The main difference is that a few new positions and situations have been added. Also, the game's AI is woefully unprepared to deal with even the most basic attack patterns on its default setting. Given the nature of some of the game's quick punch combos, it's possible to win almost every fight by using one three-punch combo over and over again. Bumping up the difficulty helps a bit, but it doesn't eliminate the problem completely.

Graphically, Tapout 2 has an interesting look to it. The fighters, ring, and surrounding items are rendered on the fly, but the crowd actually appears to consist of prerendered video clips. This makes the crowd look more active and realistic than most game audiences, but it's also a somewhat weird-looking contrast to the action in the ring. The game's fighter models look nice, but the animation isn't so hot. Much of it appears to have been taken from the previous games in the series, and the nicer-looking models make the sketchy animation stand out more than it has in previous incarnations.

The game's sound is particularly underwhelming. Instead of using big, loud, oversized smacks and thumps for strikes, TDK opted for an extremely subdued set of sound effects. While one might argue that this was done for realism's sake, the effects that are in place don't sound any more realistic--they're just less prominent. The game's music is also pretty poor, especially the menu music, which sounds like a bad MIDI rendition of the UFC music.

Overall, UFC: Tapout 2 has some strengths, but they're the same strengths that the previous Tapout game had. The game doesn't really bring anything new to the genre, and the game's AI flaws make it a very dull single-player experience. Even devout fans of the sport would be better off with the previous Tapout game, or, if they own a PlayStation 2, THQ's Pride FC.

Mortal Kombat: Deception Review

The latest in Midway's influential and long-running fighting game series, Mortal Kombat: Deception, picks up where 2002's Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance left off by featuring lots of new and returning fighters, a variety of surprising new modes of play, and, perhaps best of all, the ability to play online. The strangest part about Deception is how it includes several completely off-the-wall modes, the likes of which you'd never expect from a fighting game. These include the single-player konquest mode, which is a story-driven adventure; puzzle kombat, a competitive Tetris-style puzzle game that's an unabashed homage to Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo; and chess kombat, which is inspired by the classic computer game Archon. The konquest mode is disappointingly bland, while these other two modes are at least amusing. However, the core one-on-one fighting action--whether you play it offline or online--is easily the best part of the game. Like its predecessor, the fighting in Mortal Kombat: Deception is gory, intense, and quite complex, meaning it captures much of what's made MK an institution among fighting games.

The fighting system in Deception hasn't changed much from that of Deadly Alliance. Once again, the main twist that distinguishes this game from other 3D fighting games is that each character may freely switch between three different martial arts styles during battle--one of which is always a weapon-based style of some sort. Characters each possess a handful of unique special moves, as well as a bunch of different chain combos, some of which involve switching between different martial arts styles in midcombo. The sheer variety of different martial arts featured in MK: Deception is quite impressive, and the overall look and feel of the action is clearly inspired by kung fu movies--to good effect. Whereas many fighting games take their cues from anime and aim for action that looks more stylish than downright painful, MK: Deception goes for the hard-hitting staccato rhythms of Hong Kong action cinema and doesn't skimp on sheer graphic violence. The results don't always look perfectly fluid or natural--especially since many of the characters actually look rather stiff--but the fighting in MK: Deception nevertheless features a ton of painful-looking moves that cause the opponent on the receiving end to reel backwards, oftentimes gushing blood. The fighting action is ridiculously over-the-top, and, as a result, it's actually often quite funny.

There's a good, responsive feel to the action, and there's decent variety within the roster of selectable characters. In MK tradition, the fighters here aren't drastically different from one another. Though their special moves and combos are unique, it's not difficult to learn how to play as the different characters once you've grasped the basic game mechanics. A dozen fighters are initially available, and a dozen more are silhouetted on the character select screen, practically taunting you to unlock them. The typical match unfolds as your average best-two-out-of-three-rounds fighting game battle, but MK: Deception does have a few twists. For one thing, it's now possible to execute combo breakers (in a nod to the fighting game Killer Instinct) that let you instantly disrupt the opponent when you're on the receiving end of a string of attacks. Combo breakers are actually really easy to perform, but the catch is that you can use these only a few times during a match, and they cause no damage to the opponent. So they introduce a welcome bit of strategy to a match. Should you use your breakers right away or try to save them to turn the tables at the end of a match? MK: Deception makes a few other tweaks to Deadly Alliance's gameplay, such as eliminating the powerful impaling moves from that game and adding (back) a whole bunch of uppercut attacks--MK standbys that seemed noticeably absent from Deadly Alliance. Deception also adds a fairly useless graphical threat indicator, which (among other things) flashes red when you're susceptible to taking extra damage from a counterattack. In practice, it's just not possible to glance at this small row of flashing lights while concentrating on match action.

A much more noticeable, and welcome, addition is in how most of the battle arenas in MK: Deception feature death traps that may instantly end a round, either for a satisfying finish or a surprise comeback. For example, Mortal Kombat's classic "pit" stage returns (and MKII's acid-filled "dead pool" level is in here too), but this time, you don't need to wait until the end of a match to knock your enemy onto the spikes below. Now, if you just get him or her near the edge of the elevated platform, you can uppercut the poor sap to certain death. Should you die in this fashion, you only lose the round and not the match, which is something that's inexplicable but makes obvious sense from a gameplay standpoint. It's a like a much messier version of Virtua Fighter's ring-outs.

Most of the death traps are tucked away into the recesses of a level and sometimes require you to smash your opponent (or get smashed yourself) through a lower level before the deadly portions of it are exposed. These dangerous areas are also conveniently indicated by a red border, so you'll know when you're in a troublesome spot. A few of the levels--including one in which the edge of the level keeps collapsing, making it more and more likely that someone ends up falling--are definitely a little too prone to deaths-by-death trap. But the fact that these elements of the stages make you have to be mindful of where you're fighting mostly just help to make the combat more interesting. Plus, the death trap-related fatalities are pretty entertaining. So death traps actually turn out to be a much more fun addition to the game than you might expect. However, if you really don't like them, for some reason, you can disable death traps in the game both in offline and online play.

Of course, this wouldn't be Mortal Kombat without a whole bunch of fatalities, and, fortunately, Deception's got plenty of them.

Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL Review

Punch Time Explosion XL doesn't just take inspiration from Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series. Rather, it's as if Dexter, Samurai Jack, and a bunch of their Cartoon Network buddies staged an invasion to oust Mario, Link, and the rest of the Smash Bros. gang from the land of zany multiplayer brawlers and claim the territory as their own. The Cartoon Network crew makes a spirited effort, and they give Punch Time Explosion plenty of personality. But once the superficial and short-lived pleasure of seeing Blossom and Ben Tennyson battle each other in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends wears off, the shallow combat and frustrating platforming quickly grow tiresome. Though this updated version for consoles adds a few new modes and a number of new playable characters and stages to those featured in the original 3DS release, these additions don't make the gameplay any more exciting.

Like the games that it imitates, Punch Time Explosion XL is a fighting-focused party game in which up to four characters clobber each other on a 2D plane. There are a total of 26 playable characters; eight of these, including fan-favorite Johnny Bravo, are new to this version. As you take damage, a number displayed as a percentage increases, and the higher this number gets, the farther you're liable to go flying when hit. You lose a life when you're knocked from the stage or fall from it. Each character has standard attacks and a number of signature moves at his or her disposal, as well as a special attack that can be performed once a meter is full. A variety of weapons--flyswatters, magic wands, and so forth--spawn frequently, and if you're quick enough to grab them before an opponent does, they can significantly increase your power. In addition, special items show up that, when collected, summon non-playable Cartoon Network characters like Panini and Valhallen to lend you a hand for a short time.

The playable characters exude all the charm of their TV selves; Flapjack's absent-minded, goofy grin is infectious, and Buttercup's glare tells you she means business. But a small number of voice samples that repeat much too frequently make the game's sound design grate; hearing Ben Tennyson exclaim "I should have picked a flying alien!" for the umpteenth time as he's sent soaring off the field in defeat may push you to turn the voices off altogether.

The environments in which you do battle contribute to the craziness. One arena has you fighting on the rooftops of Townsville while a giant robot smashes the buildings under your feet. Another finds you in the mouth of a giant whale who sometimes belches huge amounts of water and dead fish into the sea, threatening to expunge you as well. The result of all this is a chaotic game in which the unpredictability and zaniness generate some short-term fun as you discover what happens on the various stages and what the various items and supporting characters do. But whether you're playing against CPU opponents or friends, this chaos also makes it difficult to take much satisfaction in victory; so much happens all the time that the ultimate outcome seems as dependent on chance as on skill. You can opt to play with fewer items or no items at all, but stripping away these distractions only makes it more clear that the underlying combat is shallow and that attacks have no sense of impact. Characters tend to come together and dish out their attacks willy-nilly until one is sent flying.

XL has a few modes that weren't in the original 3DS release. Arcade mode lets you compete in a series of brawls against computer-controlled opponents. It sometimes pits you against overwhelming odds--you may need to fight all three Powerpuff Girls at once, for instance--and these battles are more frustrating than fun. As in so many fights in the game, victory here is at least as much about luck as it is about skill. PTE mode and Drones mode put the focus on something other than clobbering each other. In the former, the winner is the player who collects the most energy cubes; in the latter, it's the player who destroys the most robotic enemies. But you'll likely still spend much of your time in these modes fighting your opponents to prevent them from accomplishing their goals, so these variations don't significantly change or improve upon the Standard mode.

Punch Time Explosion is at its best in Story mode, but even here it has some serious problems. An evil force is corrupting the universes of numerous Cartoon Network characters, providing a fine excuse for the Powerpuff Girls, Numbuh One, Dexter, and a bunch of other CN stars to band together and battle evil. The enthusiastic and funny narration by a CN voice-over guy who just wanted to relax and enjoy some cartoons on his day off lends the story an authentic Cartoon Network soul.

Platforming takes priority over punching here, and bounding across chasms and over hazards with each character's double jump is pleasant enough. Or at least it usually is; some sections crank up the challenge in ways that only result in frustration. For instance, at one point you must make your way across a series of floating barrels that have a tendency to spin when you land on them, making it overly difficult to get your footing and make the leap to the next barrel. What makes this and situations like it doubly irritating is that losing all of your lives often results in a significant setback, requiring you to repeat minutes of easy gameplay to get back to the tricky bit.

Your side-scrolling escapades are also frequently put on hold when you're required to defeat a number of small-time bad guys or a single, more powerful cartoon character. These turn out to be some of the worst moments of Punch Time Explosion's Story mode, since they can almost always be won by repeating a specific signature move over and over. On occasion, you're required to protect a character as you defeat 25 enemies, a situation that encourages you to rely on this tedious but effective approach to knock the bad guys away from the clueless and vulnerable character you must keep safe. Other diversions also crop up from time to time in the form of basic turret shooting sequences, mine cart levels, and the like, and these are more welcome, preventing the platforming from growing stale. New in Punch Time Explosion XL is the opportunity to tackle Story mode with up to three friends, playing locally. Of course, sharing the adventure with friends makes it more enjoyable, but the game doesn't always make the experience an accommodating one. If one player runs out of lives, he or she may be sitting things out for several minutes.

Frustratingly, many of the playable characters and battle stages are locked at the start, so there's a good chance you'll need to sink in some time before being able to beat up your friends with your favorite character or in your favorite Cartoon Network locale. Since the gameplay gets old fast and the characters are the game's greatest asset, it's disappointing that so many of them are unavailable from the beginning. Punch Time Explosion has a host of cool characters, but without the support of exciting gameplay, their presence can only benefit the game so much. This XL version is crammed with even more fan service than the original, but it still fails to create an enjoyable experience that makes the most of its terrific cast.

A bloodthirsty gladiator enters the ring. With eyes narrowed in steely concentration, he eagerly awaits his chance to use his serpentine sword for the purpose for which it was created. Across from him stands a towering monument to death. The stone golem has no soul within him; no human emotions to hold him back from doing the one thing he knows how to do: kill. They slowly walk toward each other. The yells from the expectant crowd dull to a whisper as these two goliaths size each other up. It is only when the epic battle is under way that the secret shame of these supposed warriors is revealed: They are fighters in appearance only. They move with the clumsy grace of a dancing sloth, swing their weapons with the precision of a bag of hammers, and exhibit the tactical ability of a cuddly kitten. When the fight mercifully ends, no one feels like a winner.

Tournament of Legends has enough features to make it appear as if it were an in-depth fighting game. The 10 fighters are based on classic archetypes, such as a Gorgon-like monster and a Minotaur, and have a variety of abilities to appeal to a wide range of fighting preferences. After each fight in the single-player tournament, new weapons are unlocked, each with its own power, speed, and reach attributes. The fighters have four unique special attacks apiece, including buff spells, melee attacks, and long-range blasts. In addition to your standard assortment of horizontal and vertical swings that you can combine into combos, you can imbue your weapon with spells that either harm your opponent, empower you, or both. When you throw all of these different features into a 3D fighter that allows you to freely move around the arena, it seems as if you have a foundation for a solid fighting experience.

But unresponsive controls keep Tournament of Legends from reaching its promising potential. Every fighter is equipped with a weapon--whether it's a sword, axe, or some other implement of death--but a variety of issues mean there is little tactical difference between how they function during the course of a match. There is often a slight delay between when you push the button (or swing the controller, depending on your control setup) and when your onscreen avatar completes the action. This hiccup makes it difficult to string moves together, resulting in choppy confrontations in which the two fighters trade blows instead of smoothly stringing together long combos. Furthermore, because the camera is often situated at an awkward angle, it's tough to tell how far you are away from your opponent to line up a crushing blow. This unpredictability is compounded by questionable collision detection that frequently sees blades pass clean through body parts with no harm being doled out.

The finicky controls make up-close combat a chore, but movement is hindered as well. The fighters range from a lumbering robot to a lithe valkyrie, but even if you select one of the fastest warriors, you still won't be able to dance away from your opponent with poke-and-move tactics. The arenas are so confined that slow opponents can easily saddle up next to their quicker competitors and ensure the battle takes place face-to-face. And there is little tactical recourse because the defensive commands are just as unresponsive as the other actions. Blocking suffers from the same delay as attacking so consistently staving off strikes is troublesome, and the sidestep button often doesn't give you enough distance to avoid the incoming attack. Because all of your actions are so clumsily executed, battles feel clunky and slow. There is no pace to the proceedings, so things often boil down to spamming on buttons and hoping you fell your opponent before he gets the best of you.

Despite the sluggish controls, the fighting does become more interesting as you learn the intricacies of battle. Every character has four unique special attacks that are activated by hitting a button in conjunction with a specific direction on the stick. These are the most powerful and useful moves in the game, but you have to use them sparingly. A special bar on the bottom of the screen dictates what moves are available to you, and filling it up while making sure you use the correct spell are the main focus of battle. There is a good variety in the moves that each fighter has as well. The gladiator can summon a bear trap from the ground to hold his enemy in place or call a lion to knock down his opponent with a jungle leap. A separate gauge determines your elemental power, and once enabled, you can poison, burn, or otherwise harm your foe. These two aspects are more entertaining than the hand-to-hand aspect, and though the shoddy controls are impossible to ignore, these moves at least add some flair to the beatings.

The arenas in which you duel are re-creations of the places these legendary warriors call home, complete with environmental dangers to spice up a fight. You may have to avoid a swooping roc or horde of angry skeletons midfight, and though the simple quick-time event needed to avoid these monsters isn't particularly interesting, it does keep you on your toes. Unfortunately, QTE are so prevalent that they can distract you from the action at times. You have to wiggle the joysticks or shake the controller when you fall down in battle, and you have to go through the same dance between rounds to repair your armor and increase your health. It's a neat gimmick initially, giving you something to toy around with outside of the core fighting, but it just becomes annoying once you get in a rhythm and have these sequences pop up at an inopportune time.

Tournament of Legends has interesting elements that give it a personality, but sluggish controls hinder much of that potential. It's just too difficult to have a satisfying back-and-forth match because neither stringing together blows on the offensive side nor countering your opponent's attacks is reliable. Furthermore, versus matches are offline only, while the story and a limited training mode are the only ways to play the game alone. Tournament of Legends has a solid core, but it gets the fundamentals wrong. If you're new to the genre and just want to see legendary warriors duel, this is fun for a little while. But fighting fanatics should stay far away from this clunky brawler.

There's no question that Digital Bridges took a risk in acquiring the Samurai Shodown license for use in mobile games. Fighting games rely on fast gameplay and cutting-edge control--attributes that are very difficult to execute on cell phones with any degree of success. Furthermore, SNK's 2D fighting extravaganza could never have fit on mobile in arcade-perfect condition, so Digital Bridges has taken some liberties with its version of Samurai Shodown, shrinking its scope and simplifying its control scheme to preserve the audiovisual feel of the original. Unfortunately, no matter how nice the resulting game may look, it plays like it has been through an edit too many.

This version of Samurai Shodown encompasses two gameplay modes: story mode and survival mode. In story mode, you must play through each of the four included characters from the arcade version: Haohmaru, Nakoruru, Gen-An, and Charlotte. You duel each of the other three characters in turn, before taking on your evil alter ego in a final battle and moving on to the next warrior. In survival mode, you pick your favorite of the four and wade through as many duels as you can handle on a single life--and the small amount of healing you receive between rounds for besting a foe. Samurai Shodown also includes a quick tutorial called the temple, which gives you the rundown on each character's attacks and special moves.

The ability to access several gameplay modes is appreciated, but Samurai Shodown's real strength has always been centered on its stellar fighting mechanics, which the mobile version simply doesn't deliver. The controls are laid out well for the handset, but they are very unresponsive. The lag time between pressing a button and having your character respond onscreen is sluggish and quite disruptive. In addition, Samurai Shodown's hit detection feels extremely buggy. Your attacks sometimes seem to travel right through your target to no effect, especially if you are standing close to your enemy. These problems are exacerbated by Samurai Shodown's lack of combat animation: For instance, it's difficult to tell if your enemies are successfully blocking an attack or if the lax hit detection is giving them an unwarranted assist.

Each character in Samurai Shodown is outfitted with a weapon attack, a kick, and two special attacks. It's not surprising that the mobile version's range of attacks would have to be pared down from the arcade, but this thin assortment of moves leaves the game feeling repetitive and bereft of any tactical depth. There are no jumping or crouching attacks for defensive or evasive purposes, so the winning strategy is usually to get up into your opponent's grill and outstab him or her with your basic and power attacks. The special moves are mapped to a few specific button combinations, but they are difficult to pull off on a consistent basis; due to Samurai Shodown's poor control response time, you will often find yourself erroneously stringing together basic moves rather than entering in special attacks. When you do successfully use your special techniques, you will notice that they are considerably more powerful than regular attacks. This is especially apparent with projectile moves like Gen-An's slow-moving poison cloud, which can damage its opponents up to three times. If you wait for your special meter to fill up and then nail an enemy with one of these maneuvers, you can take away well over a third of your enemy's stamina. If you can't beat your opponent in the race to pull off as many power moves as possible as fast as possible, odds are you won't win many matches.

It's a shame that Samurai Shodown is so difficult to play, because the game's graphics and sound have made an excellent transition to mobile, at least on Series 60 Java handsets. The background graphics are incredibly vivid and detailed, and the character art has been faithfully reproduced from the arcade. On the other hand, the game runs at a slow pace, with only a small fraction of the original's flowing animation--although you can still disarm your enemy, which is a nice touch. Samurai Shodown's music and sound effects are both excellent on the Series 60, featuring several sonorous tunes for the title screen and beginning of the levels, as well as loud, varied combat punctuations. Haohmaru's guttural screams come through as sharp as a knife, and special moves produce a vibrating, magical shimmer that will strike fear into the hearts of passersby. The game's usage of sound adds a lot to an otherwise lackluster combat experience.

Overall, Samurai Shodown looks and sounds lovely, but it ultimately fails the playability test due to slipshod control and boring, depthless gameplay. Since the fighting genre has always been all about gameplay, the development resources would have been better spent optimizing Shodown's gameplay for mobile rather than focusing on its audiovisual presentation. No matter how nice this game looks, you won't want to play it.

Titus seems to be spending most of its money lately on licenses that will turn heads: Superman is no slouch of a name, and the company's new Xena title has come at a time when watching leather-clad women duke it out has never been bigger. But in both of these instances it seems that Titus is relying far too much on the reputations of its pop icons to sell copies when it should be focusing on creating solid gameplay, smooth animations, and responsive control schemes.

It seems that Xena and Despair (the Champion of Dahak) have both laid claim to the Talisman of Fate. Whoever controls it will have influence over all of mankind, so, naturally, Xena doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. A battle ensues, but the Fates themselves intervene, deciding that the only way to settle the dispute is to hold a tournament with earth's greatest heroes and villains as competitors (how Joxer managed to get himself invited is beyond me). Up to four gamers can play, and each player controls one of the many characters from the show (Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, Ares, Hope, Callisto, Autolycus, etc.) and tries to beat everyone else's brains in with punches, kicks, and various special moves. Xena has her sword, the Chakram, and a torch that lets her breathe fire; Gabrielle has her staff, some extravagant kicks, and a Dhalsim-type meditation-into-projectile attack. The game is 3D, it supports four players, and it showcases a hot commodity. So why the bad score? It's hard to know where to begin.

Almost everything in this game is done poorly, except the music - but twice while playing this title (the final, retail version, mind you) the sound effects and musical score cut out completely at the end of a match for no reason. Restarting the game is the only way to resurrect the audio. When you can actually hear the sound effects, you hear clangs of metal on metal, metal on wood, and metal and wood on flesh. Each character has his own theme (appropriately, Joxer's sounds like the entrance music for a dismal failure of a circus clown), and these are played over and over until the corresponding character is defeated.Audial effects aside, there is a discrepancy between the manual and the practice mode as to what the buttons are called. The manual divvies up the buttons as "left punch," "right punch," etc., while the game itself refers to them as "weak punch," "weak kick," etc. - and from there it gets worse. The game is three- dimensional, but jumping and crouching are handled by the R and Z buttons. The analog controller is used solely for moving the characters around the ring and unleashing special attacks, instead of the "block high/block low" convention. Why Saffire feels the need to strike out on its on in this regard is somewhat confusing. It's also possible to perform a Soul Calibur-style guard-impact technique, whereby you temporarily knock an opponent's weapons out of his hands. But this isn't covered in the manual and seems to happen more by accident than anything else. Throwing an opponent is next to impossible, and many of the characters' special moves (like Velasca's Tornado) take more than a full second to come out, making them easily interruptible and useless in actual combat.

All of the characters have combos that can be activated simply by jamming on a C button repeatedly, removing the need for skill when juggling an opponent. In fact, it's possible to defeat the one-player game on its default setting just by pressing the down C button over and over. Collision detection is atrocious; characters miss each other by miles even though they're standing right next to each another one minute and then footsweeping airborne opponents the next. The animation is equally awful: When fighters perform handsprings to get back on their feet their hands aren't anywhere near the ground. Jumping animations are stilted and jerky, and almost all of the characters can perform attacks infinitely without any fear of reprisal.

Aside from the character animations, the visuals are moderately appealing. The camera zooms in and out gracefully as characters negotiate the distance between each other in the ring, and the close-up textures of combatants leave no doubt in your mind that you're looking at characters based on Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Conner, and Ted Raimi. The backgrounds are well-drawn collections of temples, town squares, and dungeons, and they feature plain touches such as plants, fallen stone pillars, marble floors, flickering torches, and Persian rugs.

Multiplayer games are enjoyable, but if two or more characters team up on you, you have absolutely no chance of defending yourself successfully because your back is always exposed. Defeating the computer on the hard setting is next to impossible because the two CPU characters will attack relentlessly until you're destroyed, leaving you no chance to launch a strategic assault of your own. This would probably make a decent party game for players who don't know how to do anything more than mash every button available, but fans of fighting games should stay far, far away.