16th December 2010 - Hardcore PS3 gamers have been waiting for a Move title to come out that offers more than mini games or family friendly affairs. We want something to sink our teeth into and get gaming experience that can't be had without the Move controllers. The Fight: Lights Out is the first title to try to accomplish such a feat. So let's see what they bring to the table.
GAMEPLAY
You play a street fighter trying to make your way up the ranks and develop a reputation. In order to do this you will have to train, earn cash, and build up your character to take on the streets' finest and dirtiest fighters. You start the game designing your character with a fairly decent number of options, and then calibrate. The game can be played with two Move controllers (which I did) or a combination of a Move and dual-shock controller. The calibration of yourself on screen works quite well. Once my arm length was calculated by holding the controllers out to the side, my moves that the character mimicked on screen were impressively accurate, and I started to get excited about what lay ahead. Curiously the camera calibration struggled and said my lighting was terrible - too much flickering apparently. This is despite trying it both at night with all the lights on, and in the day with good natural light. Consequently head tracking was switched off, so I have no idea how effective it would be.
What follows next can only be described at best as amusing, and at worst, well, just sad. Your training session begins where you learn the basic moves. Your teacher is actor Danny Trejo from the movie “Machete”. His real rough, gruff attitude is all good and fine, except it's hard to take him seriously when he is holding a pink and blue Move in his hands. It looks ridiculous, and I couldn't tell if the development team were just taking the piss, or whether they really thought this presentation works. Anyway after you get through the rather long tutorial where you learn to move, dodge and punch, the game opens up. In the main screen you can pick from a variety of fighters to take on and work your way up a pyramid style list. You can have further tutorials, do additional training, and heal injuries you acquire along the way. It all looks and sounds good on the surface. That is until your first fight. Then everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Unfortunately for all its' accurate tracking of your movements in calibration, none of it comes together in a fight. Your arms don't follow exactly what you do, the strikes that should be obvious hits miss, no matter how hard or fast you punch you hit like a sissy on screen, and in a fight moving around and getting the right distance from an opponent is a nightmare. To make things worse, you work up a sweat pretty quick and that makes it more frustrating when you are making little headway. To add insult to injury, your blocks don't work most of the time, and your stamina runs out so quickly it's ridiculous. Why the stamina isn't dependent on the ability of the person playing to keep punching - instead of an artificial limit - is beyond me.
This may all sound harsh, but you would only say that if you haven't played it. Hopefully by the time you finish reading this I will save you the pain. The Fight: Lights Out feels like a game that is still in development, and about 6 months away from release. The whole premise of the game is about fighting with the Move, and if that doesn't work well, why bother releasing the game? I had high hopes for this game, but also held grave fears of this exact scenario coming to fruition. Damn it. I hate it when I'm right sometimes!
GRAPHICS
The graphical style is gritty underground with lots of dark, washed colours which suits the game well. The character models look quite good, with adequate detail and some nice touches such as cuts and blood as fights progress. The underground fighting nature of the game means the fights take place in your typical alleys, under bridges etc. so are a bit bland, but you never really pay that much attention to them anyway as you're busy trying to fight.
SOUND
The Fight contains the usual grunts, cracks and knuckles hitting face effects as in any fighting game. The music is actually pretty cool, which adds to the pain as you get excited loading it up and going through the menu only to reach the gameplay.
VALUE
The game is so broken I will be surprised if many people get through the first fight and never put the disc in again. I don't think it would be good value if you got it for $10 let alone almost $60. Your hard-earned cash is better spent on the plethora of other great games out at the moment.
CONCLUSION
You may notice this review is a bit shorter than usual. I guess I have so much criticism of this game it's not worth my spending any more time writing about it, or you reading about it. The Fight: Lights Out is an attempt to bring serious gamers and the Move controller together. It fails dismally. The presentation initially gives you hope but once you're five minutes in you realise that this is going to be bad. There aren't any games using the Move for hardcore gamers yet, and despite the release of this game, unfortunately there still aren't.
AAG SCORE: 2.5/10
Pros:
+ Cool soundtrack
+ Good character creation
Cons:
-Almost everything else!
Reviewed and Written By Khye Davey