Fight Club for Xbox

Those who know me understand my obsession with the film, "Fight Club." So when I discovered that a videogame rendition of the movie was spun into production, I went into a less-than-stellar mood to say the least. In an industry where nothing is held sacred (not even cult film classics), videogames can sometimes continue the legacy of certain films, or ruin it's credibility entirely (unfortunately with licensed titles, the latter is most common). The most frequent signs of such an atrocity would be having a generic developer on board that will no doubt take any trace of originality out of the game; no doubt leaving you scrambling to find any resemblance between the movie and the actual game incarnation. Fight Club is probably the last film you'd expect to be a videogame given its status to its die-hard fan base. Sure, it could be a fighting game, but would it be accepted by all gamers, just the fans of the film, or rejected by everyone across the board? This is a question that Genuine Games evidently did not ask itself before starting production of such a venture.

"You are not the videogame you play"

I'm not going to lie, I dreaded making this purchase. But to ease my curiosity of this title, it needed to be played. My being such a fan of the film, and realizing that it will most likely disappoint me was only a catalyst of my interest. Let it be known that if any other name preceded this game, no one would turn their head with interest, no pre-release buzz would be had; and there certainly would not be any lame imitated voice over work in place of the characters of Marla Singer or certainly not the illusive "Tyler Durden." Besides, I have a feeling that if a real star of this movie attached themselves to this project, they would be banished from their fan base; hence why you'll only see characters like Meatloaf and "the guy that played the bartender" reprise their role as they had in the film.

Selecting from the list of options on the main screen (which has the backdrop of Paper Street), we are given the obligatory "Versus," "Survival," and even a "Training" mode to play around with. But the real prize (if you can even say that) lies squarely within Arcade and Story modes. This is where you will unlock hidden characters and experience the (un)expansive story line. In the beginning of the story mode, you are treated to an easy-on-the-eyes FMV that takes place in the basement of Lou's Tavern. If only the rest of the video clips were this good looking. Unfortunately, throughout the course of the story mode, you'll only watch two of these, the other being the final FMV in which the movie ends; and even then, they changed up some of the dialogue on here, making it less credible as a game based off this film.

The "clips" between fights are nothing more than a series of still images (!) that feature poor voice acting and dialogue. Here is a classic example of how all of the pre-fight interstitials will sound and look like:

"Where's Tyler?"

"You want to know where he is? You'll have to fight me first!"

Playing the game is equally redundant no matter what mode you're in. Select from over a dozen characters from the film; some of which you will recognize, others will most likely only be recollected by obsessive fans of the movie. You can play as Raymond K. Hessel (the convenient store operator that was held at gun point; apparently he has joined Fight Club), as well as Lou (Owner of Lou's Tavern, which we are also to believe has since joined Fight Club). Of course you can choose to be your favorite character from the film like "Bob," played and voice-acted by Meat Loaf; or how about playing as a poor graphical representation of Tyler Durden.

The gameplay of this title should have been a fresh, in-your-face fighting engine that gave you chills when pulling off such moves as the breaking of a limb; but unfortunately, it failed to do so. While you can, in fact, break someone's arms and legs towards the end of a match, the montage clip of watching your opponent's skeleton break three or four times at various angles gets boring pretty quick. Though it sounded like a great idea on paper, it honestly does not contribute too much into a shock value, which is what the developers were most likely going for. I see where they were going with it, but just as in Tao Feng, the breaking of limbs gets old. This will continue to happen with future fighting games until a developer can find ways to make it fresh and exciting to watch after viewing such event a handful of times.

Getting into the nitty-gritty of the actual game, you will find an uninspired fighting engine that is unresponsive and lacking the variety of moves that make some fighting games desirable. To me, what Fight Club seems to be missing is the originality that the series had invested since the film. Sure, a game and a movie are two separate entities, but carrying on the name of a movie such as this, and the legacy that followed the film should have been comparable; instead, we are subjected to a half-done, simplistic and watered down fighting game with loose references to the film. The best way I can describe it is to picture this game as a generic fighter with virtually nothing special onto itself, with the shell Fight Club.

Now, I did enjoy where the game was intending to head when you can select from a "Normal" or "Hardcore" mode when creating a new fighting to play as. The differences being that one plays like a "normal" fighter, and the other, "Hardcore," is a mode that allows your character to injure and break their arms or legs, but unlike the normal mode, these injuries carry over. This will leave it up to you to heal yourself between matches. These injuries can also be acquired online as well; this was no doubt a cool feature, but if they had made these inflictions an even more intricate aspect of the game, it certainly would have satisfied a lot more. Being a gamer, I understood where they were trying to go with it, and if a sequel were made (::shiver::), this should be one aspect they should focus on improving.

On top of this, before starting the arcade/story mode, you can select between three different fighting styles of "Brawler," "Kung-Fu," and "Grappler." Neither of which struck me as being a better style, or more fun at that. It occurred to me that a game that was built on shaky foundation to begin with should not have taken on this much if they could not get the core of the game correct.

This game gloats that the environments are interactive and affect gameplay; but after playing this for quite sometime, I can tell you that there is little to scream about here. The environments are very barebones when it comes to interactivity, although there are a few spots here and there where some events may occur. Some are as subtle as slamming into a trashcan, while others are slamming your opponent's head into a car window; but neither are as cool the first, let alone second time around. Some Dead or Alive aspects are in place when breaking through into new environment in certain stages. The unfortunate truth is that this game is based on a film that was fresh and original, and the videogame is neither. It only finds itself to be the opposite of this by taking a little bit from each fighter out there; resulting in a boring, run-of-the-mill game.

Sure, this game features Xbox Live support; but assuming that you can even find someone to play with, the game is no more exciting or intriguing than your travels offline. I will say that for the few matches I played online, I experienced virtually no lag.

The sound of Fight Club is a mixed bag in my opinion. On one hand, you'll have a decently licensed soundtrack with such bands and original music by The Dust Brothers (who carry on their original Fight Club soundtrack. Their music is interwoven between the menus and gameplay), Limp Bizkit, Queens of the Stone Age, and Korn. Even though some may not be into this type of music, the effort to get such music on the soundtrack is noted in the game's favor. Custom Soundtracks are also available on the Xbox version as you can load up your own tracks to play while kicking the snot out of Fred Durst (that's right kids, he's the first unlockable character after completing "story" mode). There is also a free 4-song download pack available as "Downloadable Content" to those that have an Xbox Live account.

The reason why I call it a mixed bag is because of the horrendous voice acting done by some of the supporting characters that you will find throughout the pre-fight interstitials. Since Brad Pitt and Edward Norton did not contribute their voices to this title, we are left with poor, neutral sounding male voices that do anything but convey a genuine Fight Club experience.

So, months back when I was dreading this game from day one of production, I envisioned it to play and feel something like I had just experienced. I cannot say that I was shocked or surprised by such a final product since no game should be made of a cult classic; especially if it were released five years before the conception of the game. All in all, this game is a series of disappointments laced with a few "almost" good ideas. Could they have satisfied me with a game based on a beloved film such as Fight Club? Well, that's a tall order; especially since the film was about being against capitalism and conformity…the game, suffers from a thirst of a quick cash-in by robbing gamers of a title that is all about conformity. Talk about creating a product that contradicts itself. Avoid this title at all costs, unless you want to recreate that feeling you get when you scratching your fingers across a chalkboard. Author Chuck Palahniuk must be slitting his wrist right about now in order to have a grave to spin in.