Fight Club

When David Fincher’s interpretation of Chuck Palahniuk’s post-modern, anti-materialistic opus Fight Club hit theaters, it instantly became a cult classic.  Now, some five years after the fact, Vivendi Universal is releasing a video game based on the beloved film.  It may seem very ironic to make a video game based on a film in which material objects (like video games, for example) are shunned and even destroyed, and even more ironic to make one that is a stagnant coupling of simplistic fighting mechanics and low difficulty.  Fight Club is a very weak fighting game that has almost no depth or complexity to it, and one that nearly any gamer regardless of skill level should be able to completely finish in one night.

The story mode in Fight Club is pretty much a throwaway, one in which a character that you create tries to infiltrate Project Mayhem, and tries to become a part of the group by getting into a series of pointless fights with folks from the film working your way up to “Jack”, or Tyler, as it were.  The story has little to do with the movie, and even though some events occur congruently with the plot, fans of the film won’t miss out on much by skipping the story mode altogether.  In another forehead-slapping gesture, upon beating the story mode (a simple feat that will take around 10 to 15 minutes) you unlock Fred Durst as a playable character in the arcade mode.  While some people might consider the ability to beat the crap out of Durst its own reward, his presence in the game feels like shameless marketing and ultimately unnecessary.

All of the fighters in the game fall under three basic categories, brawlers, martial artists and grapplers.  Characters within the same classes each have pretty much the same moves, from punches and kicks to throws.  On the other hand, the three fighting classes all control basically the same anyway.  Grapplers fight with the same mechanics as brawlers, which will disappoint gamers looking to use complex methods of subduing opponents like reversals and extensive counters.  For the most part, regardless of whom you play as, the game is simplistic button mashing with no real strategy. 

The graphics in Fight Club have good parts and bad parts.  The character models look pretty decent, as do the backgrounds.  The framerates are also pretty smooth for the most part.  However, the animations look pretty stiff and jerky.  While there are some cool bone-breaking finishing moves that cause the screen to go into x-ray mode and show the bone getting shattered, there are very few of these to go around.  This is the case for most of the cool graphical effects in the game, like blood splattering on the camera lens, as they become redundant before too long.

The sound effects are composed of overly hammy voice acting and a few cuts from the Fight Club soundtrack.  The actual Dust Brothers songs from the film stand above the rest of the game’s music, which is mainly made up of techno knock-offs of songs in the movie.

Fight Club is not only a lousy fighting game, but a lousy licensed fighting game, meaning that not only fighting game fans will be sorely disappointed, but fans of the film and book.  The gameplay is overly simplistic and far too easy to make it a fighting game to recommend.

Gameplay: 4.9
The fighting mechanics are very simplistic, all but eliminating the challenge level.  All of the fighters fall into three different kinds of classes, with little differentiation between the three.  While there are some unlockable characters and extra features, most gamers will be so bored with the overall simplicity of the gameplay to go through and try to unlock everything.

Graphics: 6.0 
The graphics have some good parts to them, like nicely detailed character models and some cool effects.  However, these effects grow redundant after a while and the animations are pretty stiff.

Sound: 5.5
The music features some nice tracks from the Fight Club soundtrack by the Dust Brothers.  However, the rest of the sound presentation is composed of over-the-top voice acting, muffled sound effects and throwaway techno music.

Difficulty: Easy 

Concept: 5.0 
The game’s storyline does nothing to complement the film’s story, only composed of a series of pointless fights intermixed with a few elements from the film.

Multiplayer: 4.9
Two-player, System Link and XBox Live capabilities, which are all well and good, but the gameplay severely limits the fun you’ll have in the multiplayer modes.

Overall: 5.0

Fight Club has overly simplistic fighting gameplay and ultimately ends up being an easy button masher with little complexity that doesn’t do justice to the film on which it’s based.  Fans of fighting games and fans of the movie will do themselves a favor by skipping this one.