Killing Zone (PSX Review)

I know you've played some bad fighting games before, you may have even played Shaq Fu! But it should be noted that in between the release date of Shaq Fu and Killing Zone, you think game developers would have learned from one another's mistakes. Apparently that is not the case with Killing Zone.

We're talking about a game so bad, that video game giant, IGN has only a 3 paragraph review for it.

This is a game so bad, that going into an epileptic fit may actually benefit you over playing this game.

This is the type of game you force your children to play when they've done bad things. This is the type of game you're forced to play for the entirety of your life when you're put on Death Row. In fact, fuck that, you'd rather they just give you the chair.

If you leave the main menu idle for a few seconds, a demo montage of all the characters plays. It's rather pathetic that THIS is the first glimpse of 3D animation you see as not only does it look mind-blowingly terrible, but the names are different to the character select screen and...well, look at it! Images speak louder than any word in the English dictionary in this case.

I love how they ambitiously display stats such as Speed, Skill and Power as if it makes a blind bit of difference.

Basically, there are 7 really generic characters. You have your Skeleton, Frankenstein monster, warewolf, Minotaur, Mummy, Medusa, and Dark Faery, all of which are 'showcased' to you in the aforementioned scene. Now that we've got a taster of the characters, I bet you're just itching to get into the game. So from the main menu we have 'Normal Mode' I guess if you're disfigured, have aids or like to listen to Christian Rock, you may not want to click on this. Next, we have Auto mode. A strange kind of tournament mode that is seriously way too advanced for it's own good. Really, do we REALLY need to know their age and dexterity levels? Let's face it, the developers didn't go into this much effort, it's just for show. That and for those who wish to just showcase the game to the friends that you will inevitably lose. And finally Option Mode, commonly known in other games as simply....options.

I'm not one to rate option screens, but this has to be the most butt fugly options screen in any videogame.

But wait, no versus option? What console fighting game do you know of that doesn't have a mode allowing you a friend to fight against one another manually? Instead, you're forced to do so primarily through continually challenging your friend though the 'normal' game's arcade mode.

So just for the purpose of getting this over with, lets pick a character. Note the characters names are completely different to what they were on the demo screen. I'm going to go with Kal, because he's a skeleton, and skeletons are cool. It's a fact.

Before you get thrown into the Killing Zone, we get a glimpse of where the battle will take place. Well, I say that but anyone would think the game takes place on Mars. Why is it so barren? You can't even tell where you're going to be fighting because the map broodingly zooms into the very middle of the screen before abruptly shifting to a random partition on the map. The map screen practically presses itself into your eyes when it zooms too. It isn't until the match begins that you realize that the venue looks nothing like how it was depicted on the map screen.

Look at this shit!

Isn't part of that map screen to give you an idea of where you're going to be duking it out? What the hell is this, Snakes and Ladders? What if in Street Fighter II, the plane which takes you to all of your next fights were to stop in America, the match begins and you found yourself fighting inside a piece of dog shit? It just wouldn't make sense! unless of course the map took place in West Virginia. ZING!

The replays are often so far away from the combat you can barely see what's going on.

So the venues are nothing exciting. The gameplay is terrible, the controls are shocking, the animations are disjointed and the presentation.... it just fails. You know how some games can be so bad it's funny, well this isn't the case. It's so bad you're going to need shock therapy and a frontal brain lobotomy.

...No, just no. You're not.

Overall, I conclude that any person regardless of sanity and taste would rather be on a real killing zone than be subject to this atrocity. There is not one redeeming factor about this. At least Shaq Fu had decent animations and visuals for it's time. Even after I say all this, the box art proudly claims...

...*sigh*

WORST FIGHTING GAME EVER/10