Maximum Letdown: War Gods (Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, Arcade)

After Midway struck gold with Mortal Kombat, they tried again, again, and again to repeat its success in the fighting game arena, but failed miserably. While Capcom was able to follow up the wildly successful Street Fighter 2 with Darkstalkers and the Marvel fighting games, SNK successfully presented Art of Fighting (along with King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, and so many others) as Fatal Fury’s successor, and Namco followed up Tekken with Soul Blade, Midway churned out failures such as Bio Freaks and Mace: The Dark Age. They had some potential though, as Bio Freaks had an dismemberment game mechanic and Mace could have been Soul Edge’s evil twin. However, Midway’s most notable attempt (and by this I mean biggest failure) was War Gods. Although it had some promise, it was dragged down by horrid controls, lousy character design, and a frustratingly cheap artificial intelligence.

War Gods centers around an alien meteorite that hit Earth thousands of years ago and split off into fragments. Throughout the ages, various people from around the world, such as a Japanese samurai, a voodoo priest, and an Egyptian temple thief, come into contact with pieces of the meteorite, gaining immortality and god-like power. Now one would think that immortality and god like power would be enough for some people, but not for these guys. Each of them wants to gather the other pieces of the meteroite and become the ultimate being, so thus it’s time to fight it out.

Now the purpose of this game was three fold. Not only was this another attempt by Midway to create a successor to Mortal Kombat, but they also wanted to use the game as a testing ground for Mortal Kombat 4. Although the game was still in its planning stages at the time of this game’s release, Midway was sure that it was going to be the first 3D entry in the series. Indeed, the game plays a lot like Mortal Kombat. The characters sport the same kicks, punches, and robotic and easy-to-memorize combos from MK. There are even fatalities you can perform. Of course the main difference between War Gods and MK is the 3D button, whch brings me to War God’s other purpose.

You see, with War Gods, Midway intended to create the world’s first 3D fighting game. Say what? But what about Tekken, Virtual Fighter, Toshinden, etc..? While those games were featured models rendered in 3D, 3D camera movement, and 3D environments, you were still locked to a 2D plane of movement, no different than say, Street Fighter. While some of those early 3D games featured a sidestep move to move in and out of the background, all it did was shift the plane of movement for a few brief moments before realigning the plane to normal, akin to that plane shift move in the Fatal fury games. To hear it from Midway, War Gods would be the first fighting game to allow players to move along all 3 planes of movement. This would be done by a 3D button. You’d hold it down to move in different directions, and you can use it for certain moves and combos. Now it shouldn’t be hard to discover what is wrong with this method: it makes the game needlessly complex, as there is yet another button to figure in to your fighting strategy. Since the 3D button is required for some of you character’s better attacks and combos, players have to react fast enough to reach another button, and all too often players are thrown off. Of course, the computer has no problem pulling these moves off. Midway was eager to bill this as the first true 3D fighting game, but what they obviously failed to realize is that even at their worst, games Virtua Fighter and Tekken played well due to having a solid and easy to follow play control scheme (in fact they play a lot better than this clunkfest). Thus, no one gave a shit about the game, be it the arcade or the home versions.

Now this game isn’t a total loss. First of all, the audio, especially the narrator’s booming voice, does a good job of setting this up to be an epic struggle similar to ‘Clash of the Titans’ (it’s just to bad that the game falls flat). Also while the character designs are some of the worst this side of BloodStorm, the lovely Kerri Hoskins is the sole exception. The Playboy Playmate who has appeared in several other Midway games (most notably in Mortal Kombat as Sonya Blade) plays not one, but two scantily clad characters in War Gods. One of which reportedly had to be glued on. I so envy the person who had that job.

Now MK4 obviously did come out, and while it was little more than MK3 in 3D, we should be lucky, considering that it could have played like this. War Gods is an excellent example of how a good concept can fall flat on its rear if not implemented right. Moreover, it’s a sign that Midway just needs to stop making fighting games that aren’t named Mortal Kombat.