05-03-2017, 06:49 AM
Speaking of fighting games, I cannot get over how bad Brutal 32X is. Just... yikes.
Going back to play the SNES version of Brutal: Paws of Fury, I play it and, you know, it's not actually a bad game. I mean, not great, but I liked the fact it had its own identity as a fighting game. Yes, it did just jump on the Anthro bandwagon of the time, and the anthro characters in the game are butt-ugly with the exception of maybe Foxy and Ivan (arguably even them, though they look cleaner), but I liked it's unique feature of having to learn moves. It never caught on (probably for a good reason) but it did add a nice bit of replay value, and while the Kata moves were mostly useless, it was still fun trying to learn them. I also didn't mind it's calm, neutral Asian music. As far as gameplay goes, meh, it's a little rough around the edges, but there's enough polish that it can still be enjoyable. Yeah, the AI gets pretty cheap later on, but you will likely have your own cheap moves to use. Doesn't mean you can spam them, but still. Overall, it's not Street Fighter, and I really wouldn't reccomend it to most people, but...
...It's still miles ahead of Brutal Unleashed/32X. I mean, Brutal 32X is a complete catastrophy of a game. You tell me a bad fighting game, I'll show you this one. There's new characters, and while the mole-dragon is kind of cool, the other new characters are just as hideous as the old ones. On a new system, they couldn't even have updated the sprites. Plus, the mature Asian music was replaced with hokey electronic music designed to be edgey or something. The gameplay doesn't even feel like an officially released fighting game, heck I've played PIRATED fighting games with more polish than this! It's hard for me to explain, but the engine shows no common sense or regard for what a good fighting game should play like. Stiff, eratic, cheap, and just all around terrible. All the problems with the first game got WORSE. And unlike the SNES game which starts out managable in difficulty until the later levels where the enemies get cheap, this game starts out cheap right off the bat. Laughably this game gives you several different difficulty levels, and there's barely any difference between them. The graphics are awful too, giving you the same exact backgrounds, but having smaller characters. The 32X was capable of bigger, cleaner sprites and the makers of Brutal 32X made no effort in trying to make use of that. Plus, compare the Battlements stage in the SNES game to the one in this game. The SNES version looked fine, but the 32X version looks grainy, almost like the screen glitched up. Just awful, really. Ultimately, this game spelled the doom for a franchise that already didn't have much potential, but this game was its gravemaker.
Going back to play the SNES version of Brutal: Paws of Fury, I play it and, you know, it's not actually a bad game. I mean, not great, but I liked the fact it had its own identity as a fighting game. Yes, it did just jump on the Anthro bandwagon of the time, and the anthro characters in the game are butt-ugly with the exception of maybe Foxy and Ivan (arguably even them, though they look cleaner), but I liked it's unique feature of having to learn moves. It never caught on (probably for a good reason) but it did add a nice bit of replay value, and while the Kata moves were mostly useless, it was still fun trying to learn them. I also didn't mind it's calm, neutral Asian music. As far as gameplay goes, meh, it's a little rough around the edges, but there's enough polish that it can still be enjoyable. Yeah, the AI gets pretty cheap later on, but you will likely have your own cheap moves to use. Doesn't mean you can spam them, but still. Overall, it's not Street Fighter, and I really wouldn't reccomend it to most people, but...
...It's still miles ahead of Brutal Unleashed/32X. I mean, Brutal 32X is a complete catastrophy of a game. You tell me a bad fighting game, I'll show you this one. There's new characters, and while the mole-dragon is kind of cool, the other new characters are just as hideous as the old ones. On a new system, they couldn't even have updated the sprites. Plus, the mature Asian music was replaced with hokey electronic music designed to be edgey or something. The gameplay doesn't even feel like an officially released fighting game, heck I've played PIRATED fighting games with more polish than this! It's hard for me to explain, but the engine shows no common sense or regard for what a good fighting game should play like. Stiff, eratic, cheap, and just all around terrible. All the problems with the first game got WORSE. And unlike the SNES game which starts out managable in difficulty until the later levels where the enemies get cheap, this game starts out cheap right off the bat. Laughably this game gives you several different difficulty levels, and there's barely any difference between them. The graphics are awful too, giving you the same exact backgrounds, but having smaller characters. The 32X was capable of bigger, cleaner sprites and the makers of Brutal 32X made no effort in trying to make use of that. Plus, compare the Battlements stage in the SNES game to the one in this game. The SNES version looked fine, but the 32X version looks grainy, almost like the screen glitched up. Just awful, really. Ultimately, this game spelled the doom for a franchise that already didn't have much potential, but this game was its gravemaker.