Fighting Vipers Review

Some Old Classics Should Stay Old… (Fighting Vipers Review)

Fighting Vipers is a very traditional style arcade fighter by Sega, originally released in 1995 and now re-released in its original form for its fans to enjoy once again. A nice gesture, but after playing it as someone new to the game for just a few minutes some problems began to become very clear. While this review may seem somewhat critical, it is worth bearing in mind that personally I have never played the original Fighting Vipers. While I am a fan of this style of game I have no nostalgic chain holding me to loving the game for what it was, so I can only truly judge is for how it compares to its competitors now. I will of course bear in mind its original time of release in this review, but this warning is simply to let you know that you should not necessarily be deterred from trying the game just because of what I point out.

The first thing to note about Fighting Vipers is that it is small and simple. There are only three playable modes, at least on the XBLA version of the game, and only eight playable characters. Arcade mode it your traditional option which takes you through several rounds fighting each individual opponent to test your skill. Aside from this there are both online and offline versus modes if you simply fancy challenging a friend to a fight for bragging rights. The game has no story mode, and the closest you get to background on any of the characters is a short description of them when you come to select your fighter. It becomes quite clear quite quickly that there is a very diverse range of fighters to choose from, but none of them particularly seem to fit in. For example, you may choose to play as fighters who are a rock star with a guitar on his back, or a boy with a skateboard. These characters do not appear as though they are around to fight, but at least you cannot say that there is no diversity.

So you have picked your fighter and you are raring to go. There is no tutorial in the game so you have decided to just jump in and see what you can figure out as you go along. Chances are, what you will find is you can’t really work out anything. The default controller setup seems absolutely random, with buttons all over the place doing different things. Whereas in fighters such as Tekken you have a very clear layout with the kicks together, punches together, and cross combinations performing grapples, here there is no structure at all. As far as I could work out in my first fight there was the A button and the right trigger on the Xbox gamepad for kicks, the left bumper was something like a grapple or throw, and the rest was a blur. The reason behind this mismatch would appear to be a simple crossover which has been performed on the game, linking an original control to any button the developers pleased on the Xbox gamepad and letting the player figure it out. There have been some games with confusing controls over time, but this must be one of the worst for it. With a bit of searching you can find a very muddled up how to play sheet, but your best bet if you want to actually play the game and know what is going on is to customise the controls yourself by guessing what the different symbols for each action actually mean in the control setup menu.

Now you have just about gotten past the control problem, so you jump into another fight with high hopes that now you know what the buttons do you can kick some ass. Well, to a point things will seem to be going just swimmingly, and then someone will do something mindboggling and you will be back to feeling lost and confused once again. My first experience of this was during a fight where a character slid between my legs and just owned me from behind. I had no idea what was going on, or how to do it myself, so I just sat and watched the replay at the end of the fight wondering if I would ever be able to play this game properly. Then, a few fights later, everything seemed to be going my way until someone manages to punch me so hard that I break the bars which I had assumed were simply the arena extents and fly off elsewhere while losing the fight. It is not impossible to do these extreme things yourself, but personally I have only managed it by chance. It is not at all obvious how to do them, which puts you at an instant disadvantage in whatever mode you play on. It is not the ability to perform these moves which causes the irritation, but the fact that they seem to occur at random and it is not clear how or why they happen.

Aside from the uphill struggle that is fighting in Fighting Vipers, there are a couple of other oddities. For whatever reason, the developers seem to have thought it would be a good idea to have the game played in a small box in the centre of the screen. Presumably this is to keep the arcade style of the original game, but this box uses maybe half the total space that my television provides, and I have to wonder if it would even be possible to see what you were doing on a smaller screen. It would not have been a massive challenge to extend the play area to a widescreen format, or even just to use up more of the available space, but apparently adapting to people’s modern setups was not a priority for the developers with this game. Less confusing but still questionable is the decision to keep the original graphics and sound effects of the game. This makes more sense in that it keeps the game in its classic format and fans will probably very much respect the decision. For others however it may put them off and in a competitive market with games such as Tekken, Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, all of which have progressed their graphics and playability a very long way over the years, you have to wonder if a HD remake may have been more appropriate.

As a whole, Fighting Vipers is a game which to some will not stand out and will fail to impress. For players that are new to the game it is not likely to give them the same sense of challenge or competition as more modern fighters do, due to its simplicity and its simple lack of excitement and depth. It is a game which, even after confusion is managed in terms of even simply controlling the game, lacks the substance of a storyline or solid backgrounds to its characters. The fights themselves are also just not that exciting, with only a small selection of fighters to choose from and seemingly random yet explosive abilities appearing out of nowhere to crush your road to victory. For old fans of the original game it will probably be a fantastic sight to see that one of their old favourites is back, but as a whole I feel the game is unlikely to take off due to its lack of modernisation, and to some extent care, with this re-release.

The Good – A classic arcade fighter that will likely appeal to its nostalgic fans.

The Bad – A very poor control setup, a lack of substance in story and characters, and a poor consideration of modern entertainment setups and the competition in the market really suggest a lack of care by the developers and let the game down.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.