Blood, Gallons of the Stuff – Deadliest Warrior: Legends Review

The human psyche is amazingly complex, and one of its many facets is that we, by nature, have to compare things.  We feel the need to put everything inside of a box and to try to label it, even if it probably isn’t very logical to do so.  By comparing things to one another, it allows us to create, if nothing else, an illusionary pecking order by which we can say with at least some confidence: “This is better than that”.

It’s the “This is better than that” mindset that’s responsible for the Deadliest Warrior franchise which spans two television seasons (entering the third) and now two video games.  It’s built around a premise that’s simple enough to come up with, but deviously designed to appeal to our natural curiosity — If Fighter X battled Fighter Y, who’d win?  Surprisingly, the winner, regardless of on-screen performance, is the player.

Deadliest Warrior: Legends is a game that shouldn’t work.  The original was the same way.  They’re licensed titles with borderline ridiculous premises that opt for stripped-down gameplay in a genre where the general rule of thumb is “the more complex, the better”.  It’s a recipe for failure that’s managed to strike gold two times in a row.  The reason it works hinges largely upon the fact that the game doles out unexpected and incredibly brief concentrated doses of pure delight by the truckload.

One of Deadliest Warrior: Legends‘ greatest strengths lies in the fact that most rounds will last between 15 and 30 seconds.  The brutally fast-paced combat doesn’t allow the player to get bored, especially when a well-placed decapitation or impalement is sprinkled in for good measure.  Not coincidentally, it’s the aforementioned decapitation/impalement/grotesque finishing move that’s Deadliest Warrior: Legends‘ other greatest forte.  Quenching some sort of primal bloodlust, Legends is chock-full of moments that never fail to make your eyes widen before you erupt in a fit of glee.  Remember how with Fallout 3‘s VATS mechanic, it seemed like it’d eventually grow old watching a Super Mutant explode in slow-motion for the thousandth time, but never did?  That’s exactly how the violence and dismemberment in Deadliest Warrior: Legends is, except it comes at a clip of at least once every half minute.

It’s clear that Pipeworks Software went into Legends with the intention of putting more emphasis on the combat mechanics.  New to this iteration are a few moves that try to reward strategy and intellect over simple button-mashing.  Some examples are a grapple system that gives you the opportunity to finish your opponent, break their arm, or break their leg in a one-button-push mini-game; feint attacks; and the ability to push.  While these are a nice addition that genuinely deepen the fighting experience, it doesn’t necessarily heighten the better player’s chances to win the fight.  While discussing Deadliest Warrior: Legends with fellow 360Sync writer Bryan Coffee, he mentioned that his roommates won’t play him in Mortal Kombat anymore because they know they’ll never win.  However, they’re perfectly willing to play Deadliest Warrior against him because they stand a decent shot at besting him.  This is a great snapshot of the game Pipeworks Software has created — one that’s incredibly inviting to the inexperienced, where all the skill in the world might not do you much good at all.

For a game with as much emphasis on fighting as Deadliest Warrior: Legends, it’s certainly interesting that the star of the show is a new mode call “Generals” that actually features very little fighting.  Generals is a mode that can best be described as “like Risk”.  Since the cast of Legends is made up of actual war lords (specifically: Alexander the Great, Attila The Hun, Genghis Khan, Hannibal, Hernan Cortes, Shaka Zulu, Sun Tzu, Vlad The Impaler, and William Wallace), Generals focuses on pitting two of these against one another as one tries to invade the others’ region.  Players are given troops and set out to invade different landscapes.  Whenever they attack a castle, they’re thrust into a one-on-one battle which they must win to take possession of.  The unlikely combination of large-scale strategy mixed with the tried-and-true one-on-one combat makes Generals mode the hands-down most attractive and engaging feature of Deadliest Warrior: Legends.

As seems to be customary with all fighting games, Legends has an online multiplayer component.  Unfortunately, this serves as the most glaring of Legends’ flaws.  The online modes are rather bare bones and the matchmaking is very spotty.  In my experience, when loading a new online fight, my 360 would lock up approximately once every three fights.  A momentum killer of that magnitude is reason enough to put the controller down for the night.

Aside from it’s multiplayer missteps, Deadliest Warrior: Legends is, genuinely, one of the most fun XBLA titles in recent memory.  It does a competent job of building upon the framework set by last summer’s original, and improving upon it.  While watching the characters sprout blood fountains where their heads were may not be the most intellectually stimulating of experiences, it invokes memories of Maximus from Gladiator shouting “Are you not entertained!?”, to which we, the crowd, respond with a deafening roar and thunderous applause.