Well, after MTV ruined the music, they decided to make some people laugh. I remember watching the premiere short of Celebrity Deathmatch during halftime of the Super Bowl a few years back. It featured the grunge match between Hanson vs. The Spice Girls. Even though the matches were pre-determined and produced in claymation, I loved watching the show once it became a series. Although the novelty of this show died after the first season or so, it will stay in my mind as a show that actually made MTV look good (almost).
I have been tracking this game for almost a year now; after seeing numerous delays and having Gotham Games stating that this game was over budget, it was ultimately released for the crisp price of $20. Well, $20 isn’t that crisp if the game fails miserably to satisfy the gamer.
It’s not that this game was “supposed” to be horrible; I don’t believe in bashing a game until you play it. Secondly, I am always intrigued by poorly made games; and in some cases, they bring me more entertainment than a good game would. You expect a game to be decent, but when you get an irritable game with poor graphics, sticky controls and poorly imitated voice acting, you get a title that will not only poke fun at itself, but make you hate yourself for even purchasing it.
Upon viewing the title screen, I have to say that I was not surprised with the un-stylized menus. It seemed like it was put together last minute. You are given the choice of “Episodes”, “Deathmatch”, “Create-a-Celebrity”, “Options” and that’s right……”Credits!” (a.k.a. names of the people to send nasty letters to).
Episodes mode is basically the main game. This is where you participate in actual Celebrity Deathmatch episodes (sweet!), each consisting of three fights. If you win all three fights in one episode, you will unlock hidden fighters and arenas. The thing that really upset me was that there were only six episodes in total to play. This limits the total gameplay length to less than an hour. I beat this game all the way through the first time through with little effort. That should pretty much say it all.
These unlocked fighters and arenas can be used when you play “Deathmatch” mode. This is where you can hook up a friend and rip his organs out, or practice against the computer (why would you practice?). My complaint about the unlockable “celebrity fighers” is that they are not actually celebrities. They consist of an alien, a wolf man, Frankenstein and a mummy. The only notable unlockable characters are the commentators themselves, Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond.
The thrill that I had watching Mr. T beat up Carrot Top on the TV show diminished when I played it on my Xbox. The voice acting was just horrendously clipped together, and if you hear how Mr. T sounds, you will cringe, I swear. The guest commentator is non-other than Debbie Matenopoulos (ex-cast member of The View). She has introductory comments before the show begins which adds no real value to the game…..at all. This also doesn’t add to the game’s credibility, which was already slacking. My other problem was the pathetic list of celebrities. Some of these people I feel are hardly worth playing as. Why would I want to fight as Ms. Cleo? The featured Celebrities include: Carrot Top, Ms. Cleo, Shannon Doherty, Carmen Electra, Ron Jeremy, Mills Lane, Tommy Lee, Marilyn Manson, Cindy Margolis, Busta Rhymes, Dennis Rodman, Anna Nicole Smith, Jerry Springer, Mr. T, and *Nsync.
Don’t even think for a second that the “Create-a-Celebrity” mode was a treat, either. There is a skimpy selection of variables to choose from to really “personalize” your “celebrity” and I doubt that I would ever use this mode again after trying it once and cursing at my Xbox.
On top of this game being a poorly executed title of a decent idea, it suffered from irritating controls that would ruin anyone’s fun when trying to finish off your opponent. You can only kill your opponent when “Kill” appears over your health bar. I have played this game many times through and I still have no concrete idea of what buttons to press to actually finish off an opponent. It ends up finally working, but I’ve spent countless matches simply button smashing to figure out how to do it. It got to the degree of me almost losing matches as a result of it. As far as I can tell, they shouldn’t even bother including an instruction manual if it doesn’t explain how to do a finishing move; to me, that’s just careless.
Most of the finishers are cheesy and simply aren’t worth the effort in performing, but it’s the only way that you can win. Carrot Top’s finisher depicts him ripping out a rib cage and plays it like a xylophone playing “La Cucaracha”. It was quite comical, I couldn’t help but laugh; besides, they still beat some of the “Friendship” finishers from old-school Mortal Kombat.
The in-fight moves are pretty lame. Carmen Electra uses her experience from the show: “Battle Bots” and commands robots to hurt her opponent. Other silly and quirky moves consist of Carrot Top punching his opponent in the stomach, but you hear the sound of dialing a phone (homage to his Call ATT commercials……oh man). Cheesy? Yes, but it may bring a smile to your face the first time you witness it; after that, it gets annoying.
The color commentary by Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond is pretty funny and true to the TV show; I was not let down by this aspect of the game whatsoever. There was one point where famous porn star “Ron Jeremy” whips something out and Nick says: “Uh, I’m beginning to feel a little inadequate, Johnny.” It played out well for the occasional honest laugh. The other times I found myself in stitches was when I realized how poorly made this game was. I did not doubt it’s potential, because it could have been a decent title, but it seemed to fall into the abyss that we know as “License Lag”.
Is this a sign that MTV concept videogames should never be produced? Perhaps, or maybe Gotham Games decided to develop a (piss-poor) game and quickly cash in on the success of the series. Well, if they wanted to cash in on the success of the show; they were a few years off since Celebrity Deathmatch hasn’t been shown on MTV in close to two years. It seems that they tried so hard to pull it up from becoming a bad title, but perhaps it was just doomed to fail in the first place no matter what development team made it. I’m sure that if you play with the right people, multiplayer can bring some entertainment, but if you are looking for a title with staying power, a plethora of unlockables and an actual challenge factor, look some place else.
All in all, it could have been worse; I had a few laughs and kicked some ass; but in the end, I was still out $20. So if you don’t mind, I need to leave the house so I can trade this sucker in.
