Deathrow delivers top-notch future sports action
BY Mike Leonard
Take the violence, strategy, and skill of hockey.
Remove any type of pesky rules (and any semblance of good sportsmanship), and set it about two centuries in the future.
Add a little more violence, just for good measure, and you've got developer Southend Interactive's idea of a good time - which, based on the score, obviously meshes with mine.
'Future sports' titles are nothing new - and usually nothing special. Deathrow bucks the traditional style of 'it's football / baseball / etc. but with robots' with the introduction of Blitz (not to be confused with the bore-a-thon mini-game from the PS2's Final Fantasy X), which combines hockey-style gameplay with the fighting action of a brawler.
Blitz is simple, which definitely is a plus. There's two small glowing goals at either end of the court, and an anti-gravity metal disc that players throw back and forth, attempting to get it through the tiny targets to score a point.
It's all in the execution. Each of the four players on each team can attack any player on the playing field (even their own teammates, by accident) at any given time, for no apparent reason. Sick of the opposition's goal defender who seems to have put up a disc-repelling force field? Hit him with a flying tackle from behind, repeatedly kick him in the head while he lies there, stunned, and watch your teammates score.
Up against a star player with incredibly high accuracy? Take him out of the match by following him up and down the field and getting in every cheap shot you can manage. Losing with only a minute left on the clock and no hope of catching up? Go down with style, and get a few extra bucks from your sponsor by making the victors very sore and bruised winners.
Savagery has just as much place as strategy on the Blitz court - you do need to remember to occasionally stop the beatings to score some points, but wearing down the competition with a few well-placed punches is just as important. In fact, you can end the match and win it completely if you can manage to knockout every single player on a team's roster during a match - no small feat.
While it's a deceptively simple concept, Southend Interactive has packed in an almost ridiculous of options to keep things fresh - 150 separate characters and eighteen different teams, along with over twenty different courts that have different sizes, shapes, and physical features that can make a huge impact on gameplay. There's no such thing as 'regulation' in Deathrow, and a particular court can severely handicap a team whose overall play style can't cope with it.
Deathrow's actual gameplay mechanics should be very familiar to sports gamers - you've got a momentum meter, the ability to switch control back and forth between individual players, and nine different stats that determine each character's skill, health, fighting ability, etc. and make each character unique.
Like all sports games, you'll only control one player at a time, and this doesn't have to be the player with the disc - you can let the CPU deal with trying to score goals for your team and simply roam the court as an enforcer, applying brute force to any given situation. You can switch your CPU teammates' overall strategy on the fly with the D-pad, ranging from a neutral balance between offense and defense, or total extremes in both. Want something to the effect of the brutality of a prison riot (handy when you're so far in the hole than inflicting damage on the opposition is your only hope of coming away with something positive, a few extra credits for the spectacle value)? Pick All Out Attack. Is the match too close for comfort and you're down to the final seconds? Go with Maximum Defense.
Control is smooth and more than adequate, but there are times when you feel like you're mashing buttons more than anything else - this may be partly to the lightning-fast gameplay speed, though, than any real weakness in the control scheme. Personally, I think that the original 'potato pad' controller is much more suited for Deathrow than the Controller S, mostly due to the positioning of the white and black buttons on the trimmer model, which can make things a little awkward - there's absolutely no margin for fumbling with the controls here.
There's two radically different camera views to choose from - Sports View is a slightly overhead angle that has limited uses beyond getting a handle on the controls during the Tutorial segments: Action View, which is set up similar to a first-person shooter, control-wise, but with a third-person visual element (you can see your player on the screen), is the real deal. It's kind of like playing rugby with Max Payne, and it's not always incredibly precise, but you should get the hang of it quickly enough.
And yes, if you're one of those who suffer from motion sickness from FPS views, pack in the Dramamine if you're planning on playing Deathrow much - the camera can whirl wildly to follow the breakneck action and make even a Halo vet a little green around the gills.
The action is Deathrow is as intense as any 'real' sports game. There are no breaks in the action, no fouls, no scrimmage lines or out-of-bounds. The disc is constantly in play. When a team scores by passing the disc through the goal, they can quickly recover it from the backfield behind the goal and repeatedly score again if the defense is lacking - it can be common to see two or three points scored in succession, barely seconds apart, which keeps the tension as razor-sharp as piano wire. Blink and you could completely blow a lead. Get comfortable at any given point, and you'll get your butt kicked.
Add to the sheer speed the fact that you've got several different elements to focus on: offense, defense, engaging in attacks on opposing players to wear them down, and trying to keep randomly picked stat-boosting power-ups that appear in fixed positions on the court out of enemy hands, and you've got a game that's got a pretty frustrating learning curve. For the first couple hours, until you get into the swing of things, you will be handed your head repeatedly, but when you finally get that first taste of victory, it's completely exhilarating.
Conquest mode is Deathrow's equivalent of career or franchise mode in a traditional sports title: take a newbie team into the ranks of the Blitz Disc Association and make them a contender. Just like in real-life sports, money can be an issue - to train and heal your existing players or add new ones to the roster, it's going to cost you. You'll even be given the opportunity to buy experimental gene-altering drugs or treatments which can boost player stats beyond the limits training will, but at a risk - the actual effects can sometimes be unpredictable and pump up one stat while dropping another.
You'll need to pay cash entrance fees to participate in most matches, and you can even get the chance to make a less-than-friendly wager on the outcome of a match. The reward potential for any match depends on the skill level of your opponents and simply how well you play - if you can't actually win the match, you can still score some cash bonuses. With so many different elements draining your wallet, you may find yourself playing a few rounds simply to get a bankroll to work with, and your skill alone isn't going to get your far - you're going to need to manage your team smartly and take advantage of every possibility to raise their potential so you stand a chance against the tougher CPU opponents.
While playing through the game, you'll also earn Unlock Credits to spend on gaining access to new arenas, teams, players - and even modes: it's possible to open up a Multi-Disc option, which allows for more than one disc to be in play on the field at once - the perfect radical change to gameplay that advanced players need to keep their interest level in Deathrow up after they've been through Conquest mode a few times.
Deathrow also offers multiplayer action for four players via split-screen, and System Link for up to eight. System Link is obviously the way to go here - the action is too fast and the graphics on average a little too dark for splitting the screen in quarters.
Graphics are well above average - the visual design is a bleak, concrete grey with contrasting neon highlights that might have climbed out of a William Gibson cyberpunk novel, and character models are very detailed. Animation is extremely smooth, and there's many impressive lighting effects: eye-candy really isn't a major issue here, but when you've got a game that essentially takes place entirely within a single room, there's got to be enough going on with the graphics to keep things interesting.
The characters are interesting and varied, ranging from robotic Sentinels to the horrific, mutated Demons - each one has different strengths and weaknesses which tie into their personalities: the Sea Cats, for instance, are a team of all-female amphibian mutants - very quick and with high accuracy, but physically weak. My personal favorites - the Black Dragons, a team of ninja players, and the Convicts, intergalactic scum playing for a pardon.
One final feature to discuss: some extremely colorful language in the voice-overs. I don't think this really adds or detracts from Deathrow to any great degree, either way, but be warned - you'll definitely want to clear any impressionable young ears out of the room before you play.
I had a blast with Deathrow, but admittedly, your mileage may vary - rent it first. Sports fans should find plenty to like here, and non-sports fans don't have to feel like they're missing out because they don't follow a real-life professional league closely enough to be able to cope with deep sim elements. It's too bad Deathrow didn't feature support for Xbox Live, because this definitely would be a great a multiplayer experience online, but as-is, the action in Deathrow is challenging and deep enough to offer plenty of replay, a nice overall package of solid visuals and addictive gameplay. |
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