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Originally entitled Clayfighter 3 and
intended for Matsushita's M2 console, the planned successor
to the 3DO. Interplay decided to jump ship and port the game
over to the Playstation and the Nintendo 64 when it became
obvious that that the M2 wasn't going make it to stores. For
reasons unknown, the playstation version was quietly
cancelled, leaving just the development of the Nintendo 64
version, which shipped in ninety-seven.
For all intents and purposes Clayfighter 63 1/3 is the
remnants of that original M2 project, trying to mold
together as best it can, is the game's foundation solid, or
did it require a little longer in the Kiln?
Clayfighter 63 1/3 runs the standard fair of fighting games
with an uninteresting story involving Dr. Kiln's attempt to
take over the world with his evil experiments, aided and
abetted by his cohorts, some of which share similar
ambitions. Bad Mr. Frosty, a reformed character, is out to
stop him with the help of various oddball characters,
including, rather bizarrely, Earthworm Jim, who is
apparently vacationing in the area as an lame excuse to add
a character known to the masses. It's silly and pointless,
but who's really playing a fighting game for its story
anyway.
You can change the control button layout and difficulty
setting, but otherwise the options are effectively
non-existent. In game characters number nine initial and
twelve in total, making the selection pretty standard fare.
The three additional characters are unlocked by completing
the game on higher difficulty levels, however a lack of any
kind of save feature, either via battery-backup or the
Controller pak will leave you wondering why Interplay
decided to lock them away, forcing players to either unlock
them each time, or use built in cheat codes. Why lock them
away without the ability to save data, it's totally
nonsensical.
The game itself has one mode, a basic arcade mode, which is
divided into six random battles against the computer ending
in the boss fight with Dr. Kiln. You can also play against a
friend in verses battles, why you'd want to play a friend on
this when there are much better games to play them with is
another matter.
Each fight consists of one long round with a two life-bar
system similar - read copied exactly - to the one used in
Killer Instinct; whoever drains both bars wins the fight.
This can lead to battles becoming rather one-sided,
particularly if there is a large discrepancy between the
opponents in skill level.
Mentioning Killer Instinct is hardly surprising, because for
better or worse, the Clayfighter series has always borrowed
and outright stolen elements from other games in the genre
and 63 1/3 is no exception.
Every control system is stolen from one game franchise or
another, from super moves aping those of Street Fighter, the
fatalities of Mortal Kombat and, above everything else the
combo system of Killer Instinct. And once you learn this
last part, the game simply turns into waiting for an opening
to let loose a combo.
While you can attempt combos in the same way as Street
Fighter, including pulling of various super moves of varying
effectiveness, it is the Killer Instinct combo system knock
off that gives the best results. All it mostly requires is a
charged or jump-in attack followed by a middle powered punch
or kick and then rotating the stick from forward to down,
repeat ad nauseam. Using this knowledge against the hapless
computer leads to some very easy victories. Against another
human, it just degenerates into both players watching for an
opening and attempting to pull of a combo, it quickly
becomes boring.
Each character can also perform a finishing combo when the
opponent is in the red, this are purely for show and are
astonishingly easy to pull off, requiring one motion
inputted in a normal combo for a 100+ hit attack to be
executed. You can also pull of claytatilies after defeating
your opponent, none of which are pulled of with any kind of
aplomb.
The game's A.I. is laughable to poor, seemingly intent on
either blocking or repeatable jumping away, leaving you half
the time trying to just get close enough to your opponent.
On the harder difficult settings this gets even more
prevalent to the point were you can spam the LP button and
watch the enemy just block even though you attacks are not
even close to hitting them. Occasionally the computer will
actually try to put up a fight and may even pull of a combo,
only to revert back to idiocy again.
In the end Clayfighter 63 1/3 just isn't very fun or
engaging to play, most of the game's mechanics are likely to
remind players of the much better games better that it
rips-off, and make them wonder why they aren't playing them
instead.
The animation for the game was provided by Danger
Productions, a company whose must notable work was the stop
motion series Bump in the Night. Here the animation is, for
lack of a better word, choppy; it is also fairly bland and
lacks any distinct character. You also have to wait for
animations to run their course, buffering is pretty much out
of the equation here. Added to this is the low resolution
that the character sprites have been added in, making them
blurry and ill-defined, even by the Nintendo 64 standards.
The characters all hail from stereotype city of the kind
that was prevalent in 1930's and 40's animation, stereotypes
that we should have graduated from years ago. If the idea of
a buck-toothed Chinese man speaking in broken English sounds
appealing to you, or the prospect of Boogerman - another
Interplay guest character added to the game - farting while
claiming that "you can almost taste it" draws you to the
game, then perhaps you should getting a better kind of
humor.
The backgrounds fair a little better, rendered in full 3D,
but even here they have a tendency to clash with the 2D
characters and most are outright void of anything
interesting to look at, or are so uniform in their
coloration that there are just rather bland. You can be
bumped from one to another via doors or the like, but this
is effectively little more than just a change of scenery.
There is also noticeable fogging when the camera zooms all
the way out, which given the lack of detail is almost an
insult to the hardware. Add to this the fact that the
in-game graphics are infuriatingly dark, making it hard to
make out the imagery at times anyway, leading to a degree of
frustration.
The camera is not very reliable, with it getting stuck
behind a piece of the foreground every so often, especially
when you're attempting combos, at these times it can
completely block a character from view, which is annoying
and makes actually controlling the game a chore.
One part of the audio that does excel is the voice work,
with renowned animation voice actors like Jim Cummings, Dan
Castelaneta, Rob Paulsen and Frank Welker providing their
collective vocal talent to the proceedings. Topping of the
cast is wrestling announcer Michael Buffer, commentating in
the background and starting the fights of with a slightly
modified version of his famous catchphrase. However having
some of the best people of the industry won't help a script
based on lame one-liners that quickly get repeated beyond a
joke, and becomes tiresome as a result.
The Clayfighter series has its infamous reputation for a
reason and with its woeful mechanics; choppy animation,
bland backgrounds, moronic A.I. an obstinate camera and
irresponsive controls mean that Clayfighter 63 1/3 is no
exception to the rule. It is a bad excuse for a fighting
game and should be avoided; because unless you have a thing
for its brand of toilet humour, there is little to entertain
a player here.
It's not so much a case of whether it needed longer in the
Kiln, but whether it should have been smashed into oblivion
when it was a mere malleable piece of soft clay.
4/10
Poor |
