ClayFighter

ClayFighter (1993) - Hourglass review

When I started writing for a videogame blog, I knew I didn’t want to be a politician. I knew I wanted my writing to reflect a deeper truth even if I was writing about a man with a pizza fetish collecting pennies in sand castles. None of that matters. What matters is that I can sleep easily having blunted your head in with unbridled, unspoken honesty even if it’s in a language you don’t understand. My friend recently gave me an ultimatum: review ClayFighter by Tuesday or be stung to death by bees. I don’t like bees. I have never played ClayFighter.

For those of you with short attention spans consider this an abstract of the original game. It involves clay, fighting and little more. There is a problem however. My friend likes this game and I write for my friend. Politics. Sometimes you just have to dive in and, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost trying to craft clay whilst not paying attention to Demi Moore cleavage is, it’s nigh fucking impossible. Resolve pushed me on. I would put myself on the firing line. I would be a paragon for journalistic integrity. I would stay awake all night, liver pulsing with caffeine and review this game...

Tuesday: 06:00am

Somewhere between student narcolepsy and Mountain Dew drenched sleep, Tuesday rose. My blank page winked at me. The bees were coming and writing an opening declaring my devotion to honey wasn't going to save me from imminent death. I hastily set off on my stupid journey to find just what all the fuss was about. Rushing into the city, knowing stream of consciousness and fingers would be my best defence against the dark, swarming cloud, I located my refuge: a dank caffeine den overflowing with wobbling, bean addicts, set my laptop down on a grotty table and typed for sheer life.

                                                                       bzzzzzzzzz

14:05pm 

ClayFighter (1993)

ClayFighter was a wild idea. Parents could rejoice in violence, child in tow, whilst belaying all fears of the wee bairns becoming future harbingers of global mass death. ClayFighter is love. Not Patrick Swayze love. Tough love. Real love. It’s the love of punching that snowman in the face on Christmas day when you had raced downstairs to the smell of warm oat cookies and a roaring charcoal fire only to find Santa Clause has shat in your stocking. It’s Walace and Gromit on acid. It’s…not that special.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 

14:15pm

It’s hard to know where to start with a game like ClayFighter. There’s something so strikingly unfinished and uninspired about it all, that the characters, even when they are this original; when they have moves this promising, just seem to plod about exhausted by the games own inability to mould them into something greater. This would come later with more ambitious sequels. Regardless, there’s simply no finishing touch here. No definable story. No real personality on display. It’s the recent Tim Burton movies with Johnny Depp. It’s a constant reminder of better times had elsewhere.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 

14:28pm

Yes, sadly it isn’t as gooey as you might expect. In fact it downright bland. For a game about cartoon clay wrestling to death in an exploding, flying circus this is damn boring. Perhaps I should have lowered my expectations. Perhaps I was expecting too much when I travelled back in time to pick up putty in an explosive era of Samurai Shodowns and Killer Instincts. But the original ClayFighter could have been nuclear. It just wasn’t formulated correctly. It has the grace of a game rush released for Christmas incapable of becoming anything more than the sum of hollow parts. Take that bees.

 ClayFighter: Tournament Edition (1994)

15:23pm 
       
Two games? They re-released it? That's not fair! Does nobody care that Christmas is fast becoming a cold clammy season drizzled with orphan tears that they would holler “MORE” as they dish out this mess?  I'm glad version two ads a plot for the snowman but that doesn't excuse this cash in and it's still about as gripping as…Oh god, bees! Horrible, stinging bees!         

Fun 2/5

Graphics 3/5

Longevity 2/5

Endpoint 2/5 

Hourglass Recommends: 

Garou: Mark of the Wolves (1999),  ClayFighter 63 1/3 (1997), Earthworm Jim (1994)

Rise of the Robots

Rise of the Robots (1994) - Hourglass review 

 

 

In the fall of 1994 there was a game known as Rise of the Robots. What I tried to do there was not funny and nor was this game. In fact, Rise of the Robots played like a game designed by microwaves and unemployed astronauts struggling to understand why people enjoyed doing things with buttons. Things like playing video games, going to work or switching off terrible reruns of Baywatch. And to their credit if anything can combine button pressing, employment and bad television it is this game.

The characters aren’t worth talking about but given that I am running with the theme of wasted energy I’ll begin. There is a blue, yellow, red, green, white and silver robot. The end. I would like to point out here you play as none of these and unless you have two controllers, and a friend chained in your basement, alive by steady diet of determination, assault and this game alone, you will never use them. The lead character is your only concern,. He is a cyborg aptly named the cyborg. You as the player have the thrill of conquering all of these colours with a simple flick of the kick button which you can occasionally mix up with a few strokes of the back button and the up button. Credits.

Now you might be thinking, “wow what a stinking pile of ass but what is the problem here? Aren’t there more pressing issues out there in the world? Shouldn’t you be out there tackling AIDS, cholera and plague-ridden dwarfs?” My answer? No. And here is why: this game celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year and should be remembered not only for its painstaking lack of attention to fun, but also as a firm example of how marketing companies write heart warming, rainbow quilted crapola in the press about how their game will “enrich the earth” and Mirage’s marketing division was no stranger to the concept of the illusionary.

Firstly, we were led to believe that this would be the videogame equivalent of Blade Runner. A fully immersive, breathing environment of robot justice awaiting all those hungry enough to purchase this road hugging turkey. Even with revolutionary CGI graphics, what this motif boiled down to was a simple opening where Mr Cyborg wakes up, flies into town and walks over a platform. Sadly, this wonderment could be appreciated on your 3DO, and because Rise was spread over 16 bit consoles and handhelds globally few would even see this incredible walking across a platform feat anyway.

Secondly, the game was marketed as one of the first boasting an active A.I. system. The robots would learn how you play the game. They would develop unique strategies to counteract your moves. Kick, kick, kick, death. Awful, awful lie. If robots demonstrated any degree of learning in this game it was the complete understanding that they must kill themselves immediately and that suicide by foot was the most intelligent option available in a factory of misery and lies.

                                                           

Finally, Brian May and I have to mention this, because it’s Brian May. That rocking, long haired, take no prisoners hero that even your dad loves wrote the soundtrack. And with Queen, Blade Runner, A.I. and machines where can you go wrong? As clique a rhetorical question as this may be let me answer it. Never play this game and please try to get more fresh air. May frets three chords on the opening title then swiftly leaves to be awesome elsewhere. Take his cue. The results of Rise spoke in whispers, disappointed sentient life and faded through the mists of time but those lies and mahogany slamming afternoons lived on in our hearts forever.

Fun 0/5

Graphics 3/5

Longevity 1/5  

Endpoint 1/5 

Hourglass Recommends: 

Guilty Gear X (2001), Street Fighter 3: Third Strike (1999), Garou: Mark of the Wolves (1999).