War Gods is a 1996 fighting video game developed and published by Midway for arcades. Ports for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Windows were released in 1997. Players control one of ten fighters who have been given great power by a mysterious ore that crashed-landed on Earth from outer space. The object of the game is to defeat all the other fighters to become the most powerful warrior on the planet.

The game was heavily influenced by Midway's Mortal Kombat series, and features controls similar to that series, as well as its signature fatalities. Unique to War Gods is the "3D" button, allowing players to use the background/foreground for additional attacks and evasive maneuvers; in other words it lets the player dive around the ring in a circular arc as part of their attacks and defensive moves. The orbiting camera smoothly follows the fighters, working to maintain the left/right "fighting line" needed for coherent two-player joystick control on the arcade cabinet. The game's graphics were created using a technology by Midway called "digital skin", which mapped photographs onto 3D models.

War Gods received mixed reviews, with particular criticism being directed at the game's character design and animations.

Gameplay

thumb|right|War Gods' character design and graphics were criticized by reviewers. The levels are set in areas native to the War Gods, such as the Warhead's military base, Anubis's desert pyramid, Ahau Kim's ancient aztec temple, Pagan abandoned ghotic church, Voodoo's Bayou forest and Kabuki Jo's Samurai temple. To prevent situations where opponents end up on different playing fields for prolonged periods of time, each character has a teleport move which moves them close to their opponent. Just as in the Mortal Kombat games, players select a character and fight a series of opponents. War Gods also features [[combo (video gaming)|combos which can be used through series of button presses. Like the Mortal Kombat games, the game has fatalities that are used to finish off opponents, aside from one Fatality per character the game also has other three types of finishing moves such as 10 Hit Combos for each character and By Pressing High Kick with the 3D button the players are able to perform a Stage Ring out finishing move and by pressing Uppercut they can punch the opponents high in the Sky.

Development

Released by Midway as the first of its new 3D software prior to the release of Mortal Kombat 4, War Gods was developed by a team led by Joe Linhoff and George Petro. The arcade game utilized a hybrid of the hardware used for Cruis'n USA with a hard drive for data storage. All the moves were recorded using motion capture with just two actors. The in-game characters were created using a technology called "digital skin", which involved digitizing reference photographs of live actors and mapping them onto 3-D models.

Gamefan reported about War Gods in August 1995 claiming it will use the same hardware as Killer Instinct and will be unveiled at Amusement Expo International in September 1995. However War Gods did not get unveiled until at a trade show in March 1996. In response to suggestions and complaints about the gameplay, several months were devoted to refining the game's programming, delaying the arcade release to the third quarter of 1996. A Panasonic M2 version of War Gods was in development and slated to be one of its launch titles, but it never happened due to the system's cancellation.

Reception

The response to War Gods was lukewarm. Critics from GameFan and IGN felt the N64 port improved on the problems of the arcade port, such as the AI and frame rate, although the former source expressed that it was a waste of resources to do so. Game Revolution, however, said the character designs were "pretty cool" and complimented the variety in the available fighters.

The response to the game's graphics was mixed. Computer and Video Games had a positive impression of the in-game models with "digital skin". Casamassina wrote that the while the digital skin textures were "initially nice", the "animation and terrible character design detract greatly from the whole experience." The magazine's later review of the game, however, criticized that too many of the fighters' moves are obvious parallels to moves seen in the Mortal Kombat series.

Next Generation and Crispin Boyer of EGM noted that the Nintendo 64 version was actually enhanced over the arcade version, with faster gameplay, better anti-aliasing, and bosses which were tuned to present a more reasonable challenge, but both felt these enhancements were not enough to make the game good.

See also

  • Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.
  • Mace: The Dark Age
  • Mortal Kombat 4

Notes

References

  • at Eurocom