Write-Up
Write-Up:
There have been a pretty wide variety of games released lately and while I’ve been spending most of my spare time pwning it up in the Bronze League of “Starcraft 2”, I thought it would be nice to take a break and take out some frustration with a good new fighter game. Released on July 6th for 20 bucks on the Wii, developer High Voltage Software and publisher Sega failed to deliver with their new title, “Tournament of Legends”. What’s worse is that the game actually had some great potential, but I think it was all wasted on console that just can’t handle today’s generation of non-children games. I’m not trying to hate on the Wii, I think its great for certain things, just not in this case.
While I don’t typically care for what the story of a fighting game really is all about, “Tournament of Legends” actually had the potential for something pretty cool, but I just didn’t really care about any of the characters. Jupiter, the King of gods has gone missing, and as such, the other gods have gone into hiding as they fear mortal retribution, that is, all except for the god of Death, Thanatos, who feels that he is immortal and has nothing to fear; but there are those who would claim the power of death for themselves to use for their own purposes. Each character, be it a Roman Hero or Egyptian Legend has their own motives, explained in a short character intro upon selecting them, which are all kind of interesting; there just isn’t enough story content to really hold you.
For 20 bucks, you really don’t get that much content for your money. The combat is quite repetitious as all of the characters play exactly the same, there are only a few battlegrounds, and each tournament is only 9 rounds. The game has 8 characters that you begin with and 2 that become unlocked over time. There is built in split-screen multiplayer, which is a perk, but no online play, which pretty much blows. Like all fighting games, the opponents get gradually more difficult over time, but not by much, and even if you do die, you have unlimited continues, so there really is no risk to losing beyond the annoyance that you’ll have to fight the same boring opponent over again. That’s about it; this is a very simplistic fighting game. No additional game-play modes or anything… Just single player tournament and split-screen versus.
The game may be played with either the Wii Remote and Nun chuck or the Wii Classic controller and I’ve got to say, if you own the Wii Classic Controller, don’t even turn the damn Wii Remote on, because its controls are terrible. I guess I’m just sick of games that are not designed from the ground up for the Wii Remote, but still add in motion controls as an afterthought. Your character attacks when you perform various swings with the Remote and Nun chuck combined with various button presses, but it’s really unresponsive and doesn’t always do the action you want it to. To me, shaking the Wii Remote around is just a horrendous way to play a fighting game.
Each character has 3 unique moves and a move unique to the weapon they are currently using. Unfortunately, all moves are performed the exact same way for each character, so there really is no difference in who you play with. With that, each character has a default weapon, and a default enchantment to that weapon that provides bonuses during combat. Upon defeating an enemy, you will gain access to their enchantment and possibly their weapon as well which in turn makes each of the characters even less unique.
Each character has a set of armor that provides them additional protection until they take enough damage for the armor to break off. The matches last 90 seconds or until one character kills the other 3 times. If time runs out, a mini-game pops up allowing you to repair your health and armor by seizing up on the Wii Remote before 90 more seconds are added to the clock.
All in all, the game-play is kind of fun for an hour or so, but the awkwardness of the controls and the repetition really catch your attention pretty quickly.
Its tough for me to comment on the presentation of Wii games it seems. Some Wii titles like the “Super Mario Galaxy” games offer beautiful graphics and amazing soundtracks, and others, like “Tournament of Legends” really fall short in nearly every aspect. The battlegrounds that you play in look pretty decent as they are really bright and colorful, and the characters look all right, but everything just looks very dated. The soundtrack is quite bland and the only voice acting in the game is done by an annoying narrator and a few one-liners before and after each battle from the characters that are quite possibly the cheesiest lines I’ve ever heard in a video game.
While I wanted to take a break from all of the Real Time Strategy that I’ve been playing lately to vent some frustration with a nice new fighter game, I really wasn’t able to do so with “Tournament of Legends”. While the price tag is just a mere 20 bucks, I still don’t feel it offers enough content and enjoyment to merit that cost. I might recommend it as a party game or something if the price tag was 10 bucks, but the wonky controls, un-unique characters, repetitious combat and lack of game-modes really lead me to look away from this title. Take a look at some of the game-play and let me know what you think. Do you think this game could have been better had it been implemented on the 360 or PS3, and are you equally annoyed by motion control support added as an afterthought to games that clearly should not support it in the first place as well? Leave your questions and comments below!
Developer: High Voltage Software
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Wii
Price: $19.99
Review Video: http://www.youtube.com/ZeitgeistReview
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ZeitgeistReview
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**This title was provided to me free of charge from the publisher to review for you.
