Fighting Force
Beat 'Em Up
1-2 Players
System: Playstation
Developer: Core Design
Year of Release: 1997 (North America), 1998 (Japan)
Beaten: July 19th, 2014
Fighting Force is the first game my buddy recommended we play through that was a co-op beat 'em up on Playstation. We did play it first, but after dying once and having to go back to the last save (a common feature in older games that I don't hold against this) I decided to move on to another game. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but just as a break. We popped in Crisis Beat, and we didn't stop playing. Only because we didn't die, well the plot was pretty funny in a "what the fuck" sort of way, but the entire time we were bored. We went back to finish up Fighting Force and it is definitely the superior PS1 beat 'em up. It still isn't phenomenal though.
Four characters are available to choose from, the generic dude, two "sexy" ladies and a huge brawler guy. I chose one of the ladies as their character model looked the best (there was something wrong with the dude's face..) and my friend picked the big guy. It's a pretty simple beat 'em up with only two attacks available, one of which lets you pick up items to throw or smack into people. There's slightly more of a focus on mobility in this one with a jump and a run button. You can't attack whilst jumping from what I could tell but there's actually two running attacks. One never seemed to hit, and one always knocked opponents down but did little to no damage.
Gameplay is the typical affair, run through the areas and beat up wave after wave of enemies. There's a destruction bonus at the end, but the bonus seemed mostly pointless compared to the possibility of finding healing items or weapons. The enemies were more intelligent than in Crisis Beat for the most part. They did actually attack, remarkable, but they also seemed to be huge fans of blocking. Pretty much every time I attacked I did very little damage and it just dragged some fights out unnecessarily. It made the game feel longer than it should have. Towards the end I was feeling pretty burnt out. It didn't help that in the last bits enemies swarmed you and would knock you down repeatedly before you had time to react. Bosses in this game are pretty simple affair. Massive damage sponges that require hit and run tactics if you don't want to waste lives. They weren't bad or anything, just slowed things down a bit more.
I honestly can't even remember a plot. I don't remember any dialog of any sort. You just kind of go forward, kick random people's asses (thugs and cops both as well as military men possibly?). Eventually winding up on a boat that's heading towards a possibly volcanic island, after arriving you take a long elevator to the top and you fight the final boss. It's not a very long game, maybe 7-8 stages or so, and there was really no plot. I can't really fault it for that, beat 'em ups are seldom storytelling heavy hitters.
Overall it was a decent experience, I mean there's plenty of fantastic beat 'em ups to experience before this, but if you happen upon it with a friend it's worth checking out I guess. Though I don't know how you'd randomly stumble upon this game nowadays, I certainly wouldn't suggest spending any real money towards it.
Fun fact: We made the camera freak the fuck out at one point. We stood on either side of a desk and the camera didn't know what side it should be on so it rapidly switched back and forth between views. While disconcerting it wasn't during combat so was just incredibly humorous. This sort of happened during the final boss which was just annoying more than humorous.
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