RETRO REBOOT | War Gods (Nintendo 64, Sony PlayStation)
Sacrilegiously terrible tournament fighting
RETRO REBOOT
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
6/16/20264 min read
Developer: Midway
Published by: Midway
Released Date: August 1996
Ah, the golden age of fighting games. As the genre was burgeoning with the arcade scene, and home ports were becoming more ubiquitous, the two titans of the field, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, set the standard for other game studios. SNK and Sega had their influence, but more often than not, publications at the time compared everything to the two juggernauts. And in many, MANY regards, some companies blatantly ripped off the most commercially successful games in the market. Midway even started copying themselves. Wanna play a game that feels like Mortal Kombat after being smashed in the face with a cement brick? Try out War Gods!
If info came out that War Gods was built as a stress test for what Midway wanted to do with Mortal Kombat 4, I would be inclined to believe that. It predates MK4 by year, with the latter hitting arcades in 1997. The gameplay and control scheme sports an incredibly similar feel to the defenders of the realm franchise. It's got the high and low punch/kick scheme, replacing the "Run" button with a "3D button", which is something that is noteworthy and admittedly a fairly progressive idea for the time. True 3D tournament fighting in an arena, so it was fascinating to see games experiment with this uncharted territory back in the mid-90s. The button acts as more of a dodge into the background and foreground, and launch different kinds of attacks. Beyond that innovation, it features finishing moves and stage fatalities, things that by 1996, I was starting to find really drawl.
The game does not have particularly interesting lore; humans acquiring the power of Gods to assemble pieces of a relic from a crashed alien ship to defend the planet. Not really anything that's setting the imagination on fire. It gives off the vibe of a rejected indie comic idea that someone in Midway thought would be awesome. While the idea of beings of otherworldly powers may be interesting, it just feels incredibly dated, and the ultra lame character designs are visual Ambien. From the company that presented memorable personalities like Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero, and Kitana comes Kabuki Jo, Cy-5, and WARHEAD. Sounds more like a lineup of enemies He-Man and the Masters of the Universe would be fighting, rather than a marquee roster of premium fighting game characters.
I may be getting repetitive here in these reviews saying this, but the graphics from this period have not aged well, and it only gets worse with the continued passage of time. That being said, War Gods is one of the most generic and un-dynamic tournament fighters of the era, or maybe EVER. The roster is a putrid amalgamation of what some corporate suit probably assumed teens thought was cool.
Their animations have the style and fluidity of backyard wrestlers with Parkinson's. Nobody on the roster has any kind of transcendent charisma that would make anyone want to pump quarters into the machine to control these lumbering pieces of compost. The stages are themed after each character, and there wasn't much to look at. Flat, mediocre locations that will float out of your mind once you're no longer looking at them.
Looking for even cool finishing moves? Not going to find them here. The video game violence that made Mortal Kombat not only so controversial, but visceral and brutal, was in part due to the digitized actors portraying the kombatants and the primitive effects. They looked lethal in their practicality. When trying to apply that same grisly ruthlessness with chunky 3D models, it just doesn't work (and frankly I don't think Fatalities have been the same since). The violence looks cartoonist and placid when the overall visual tone is rather bright. The special attacks don't look impressive, the combos are the same dial-a-combo Mortal Kombat has seemed to buy an engagement ring for, as they still use them to this day. But they aren't any fun here then they were in Mortal Kombat 3.
There are FAR worse fighting games from this era than War Gods. As a rental, it's harmlessly below mediocre. As a purchase, this game collected dust. There's no reason to put this in your Nintendo 64 if Killer Instinct Gold or Mace: The Dark Age is within reach. And even the lameness of the first Tekken is more desirable and stimulating. While Mortal Kombat 4 was pretty successful, Midway's hold on arcade dominance was beginning to loosen at a rapid pace, and War Gods was the lactic acid forming in the fingers.