Damn, I love netjak. This is a review that should have been done a little while ago, when we were rating the five worst electronic atrocities of all time. Surprisingly, no one brought this one to the table, so I’m taking one for the team. I guess this makes me somewhat of a martyr.
Now, I’m sure sometime in your gaming life you may have had this discussion with your buddies: “What’s the worst fighting game of all time?” Titles like Street Fighter: The Movie and Fighter’s History may have come up somewhere in the convo. Yeah, they sucked pretty badly, but how about a game that was so terrible, the thought of mass-production and multisystem releasing would be absolutely sacrilegious? As evil as it sounds, it’s happened. And its name is Shaq Fu.
Shaq Fu is undoubtedly one of the worst games of any genre ever created, and it leaves many, if not all of us wondering “Why? Why did he try to make a fighting game instead of sticking with what he knows and is famous for?” The answer is simple. It’s the same reason he put out bad music and even worse movies… to branch out his popularity and make some extra change. Bad rap, bad flicks, and now this.
For prosperity's sake, one of our forum members actually happened to have a copy of the commercial Electronic Arts made to sell Shaq Fu. Enjoy the commercial brilliance that can only come from a spastic Kelsey Grammar lookalike.
The Story
Okay, the long version of the story goes like this: A few millennia ago, an evil sorcerer named Sett Ra was the ruler of a dimension known as the Second World. He, alongside his loyal servant, Beast, is determined to expand their dominance by taking over the First World, which is a little place we call Earth. Sett Ra eventually destroyed the Pharaoh of Egypt, and took over his throne. The late Pharaoh's son, Ahmet, swore vengeance and escaped the pyramid Sett had taken over. Ahmet would unite with his grandfather and a clan of wizards and use their power to send Sett Ra back to Second World. They were successful; Sett was sealed away in the tomb where he laid dormant for over a thousand years.
During Sett Ra’s nap, Beast roamed the Second World searching for his master. He finally finds and awakens him, and together they plan another assault on the First World, but in order to do so Sett must conduct a ceremony involving a bloodline descendant of Ahmet. Beast returned to Earth, captures a child, Nezu, and brings him back to the Second World. Here’s where the suspense climaxes… the final preparations are made, and the only person that can stop the power of the invincible Sett Ra is “The Chosen One.” And that man is…
Shaquille O’Neal?! Yeah, way to go. You have a halfway decent storyline going, only for the hero to be a friggin’ basketball player whose failure as an entertainer is more than evident. With that said, let’s get this thing started.
Gameplay
Gameplay? What gameplay? As far as the gameplay goes, every aspect is terribly flawed. The in-game actions, the controls, everything. Yeah, this is a 16-bit game and we live in an age of far more advanced gaming, but realistically, that’s no excuse for having gameplay this terrible. Back then, other fighting games from this generation had the concept down to a science. So what’s the problem with Shaq Fu?
Of almost every fighting game I’ve ever played for any system, Shaq Fu has the clumsiest controls I’ve ever had to displeasure of using. Pulling off a special move is a trial of patience, and it won’t be long before you catch yourself sticking to a basic punch-and-kick offense. Now, there’s more to the flaw than just the controls…
The main issue when playing Shaq Fu is a total lack of timing when maneuvering. Everyone knows how critical timing is in a fighting game--basic attacks, blocking, throwing projectiles, etc. For whatever you wish to do while in action, there is a lag, and in order to have an effective strategy, a player must adapt to the game’s flaw and work with it or around it. Major deduction, right there.
Timing is a problem even in jumping. In most other games of this genre, the player has plenty of control over when, how far, and how high their character can jump and where they land. You can forget about it here. Press up for a regular vertical jump, and it’s the same height each and every time regardless of whether you press or tap it—no short hops. You want to jump across the screen, huh? Okay, but you’re jumping the same distance every time. No gauging your leaps or cutting the jump back in mid-air, so once your feet leave the ground you’re pretty much screwed because you never know where you’ll end up. Most times you’ll be in a seriously bad position.
Aside from jumping, projectile attacks conflict with the in-game lagging. Once you execute the command (if you can, that is), the lag and lack of combat animation kicks in, and whoever you’re playing against can see it coming a mile away. Like I said before, it will come to a point where you’ll cut it out of your overall repertoire, assuming your patience allows you to make it to that point.
Let’s talk defense. Again… timing, timing, timing; you’ll have to modify your blocking with the game’s slowdown. As essential as defense is, it can also become impossibility, especially in close combat. Oh, and don’t get me started on blocking projectiles. Anyone who is familiar with Shaq Fu knows what I’m talking about, and this is probably the most idiotic concept ever devised in a fighting game. In this game, you can’t guard against a projectile weapon with a standard block. Each character has a magic force field they can activate to deflect these attacks. However, this shield can’t ward off physical attacks, so the opponent can punch and kick right through it. How asinine is that? I understand EA and Delphine may have wanted to do something different or help bring a new facet to fighting games, but this outright ridiculous.
Shaq Fu has three modes of play, and all of them are terribly dry. The worst one is the story mode, mainly because you can only use Shaq. This game isn’t the only one that works its story mode like that, and it still befuddles me as to why companies insist on doing that knowing that gamers are going to gripe about it. In the story, you move Shaq around on the world map to different hot spots where you battle the six other characters. The sub-boss is Beast, and you face Sett Ra as the end as per the storyline. For one or two-player combat, there is the duel mode. Players can select their character and adjust a handicap in two-player battle, and in single-player, you simply climb oh-so-short ladder of characters. For a party, there’s the tournament mode for up to eight players, but who in their right mind would spoil a good time by blowing the dirt off this drivel?
Graphics, Sound, and Animation
Now, I will say Shaq Fu is a fairly colorful game, so it’s not a complete nightmare in graphics. For the most part, this is the area the developers actually got right. All characters are presented fairly well; not fully up-to-par as far as 16-bit technology is concerned, but just well enough. A few of the fighting stages have a foreground, and despite it being a minute addition, it does help the look of the game a little.
A little.
With the exception of the lagging during combat, the animation is fluid for the most part. The fighters’ stances and attacks flow reasonably smooth, but despite a decent presentation, it’s nowhere near enough to convince a true gamer that this title is worth thinking over. But, at least they tried here where the gameplay failed.
The game’s sounds seem pretty aggressive at first, but then after a while it starts to sound like a B-rated kung fu flick, especially the sounds Shaq make. For a three hundred-pound seven-footer, he sounds an awful like Chun Li. And as far as the background music goes, you’re better off playing your own music. Usually, a game’s music is supposed to “get you in the mood,” so to speak. I don’t know what these tunes were meant for, but fighting isn’t it.
Replay Value
For once, I’m tempted to just leave this section of the review blank. It’s tough to squeeze a decent paragraph based on an aspect of a game that is completely nonexistent. There are no little bonuses you can pick up. There are no hidden or unlockable characters. Therefore, there is absolutely no incentive to continue playing this drivel, so when you run through it once, that’s all she wrote, that is, if you can tolerate it.
In conclusion…
Well, it’s simple: there is absolutely no piece-of-crap fighting game that crappier than Shaq-Fu, and I defy you to find one that sucks more. I don’t know what the hell Shaquelle was thinking when he came up with this one. Please, readers. Whatever you do, don’t follow my lead and waste your energy looking for it, and if EA knew what was good for them, they would found the wasteland where ET was buried and made room for this trash. You may be curious to see just how bad Shaq-Fu really is, or maybe you think I’m exaggerating the atrociousness of the game, but I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say LEAVE THIS GARBAGE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BIN!
