I remember playing the original Fighting Force demo for hours when I was a kid. I would walk around the first level as Smasher and well… smash things. There was something so fun and visceral about beating a cop car until the tires would pop off and then picking up the tires and launching them at incoming enemies. I remember figuring out where the hidden rocket launcher was and the satisfaction of causing mass destruction with it. Those are memories that are core to my early years of gaming.
After the good people at Limited Run Games and Implicit Conversions announced they were bringing Fighting Force 1 & 2 to modern consoles, I thought I would finally be able to play through the whole game and relive some of those memories. Well, it seems some things are unfortunately better left in the past.
An Aged Relic
For those unfamiliar, Fighting Force was one of the first attempts to create a 3D beat’em up game. You and one other player are able to team up as one of four playable characters to fight your way through hordes and hordes of oncoming enemies. Each playable character feels completely different from the others, allowing for some fun co-op combos and some replayability for those wanting to rock through the game solo. As you progress from stage to stage, you will be introduced to new enemy types that will either have new movesets or weapons, and face off against powerful boss fights. Fighting Force is a victim of its time, though. Developers hadn’t perfected 3D movement and controls by the time Fighting Force was released, and this remaster brings the game into modern times just as it was back then: clunky, unintuitive, and kind of awkward.
Characters move as if they are wading through mud, animations for picking up weapons in the environment are excruciatingly slow, and the enemy AI is relentlessly aggressive. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself cornered by 2-3 enemies and was just mercilessly beaten to death. Thankfully, the game allows you to make quick saves, a feature not in the original release, so you can quickly reload when these situations get out of hand. Those who grew up in this era of gaming, myself included, might be able to look past these cumbersome controls and just laugh it off as “that’s just how things were those days.” Modern gamers or those looking to try out Fighting Force for the first time, however, don’t have the nostalgia to push these issues aside. It isn’t that Fighting Force is a bad game; it just isn’t very remarkable. I’m glad it is playable on modern consoles for those who want to stroll down memory lane, but I can’t recommend it to anyone beyond that.
And then… there’s Fighting Force 2. Oh boy.
Better Left Alone
I had never heard much about Fighting Force 2 over the years. I knew it existed, but I never heard anyone talk about it. After suffering through Fighting Force 2’s campaign, I can understand why now. Outside of having one of the playable characters from the first game, Hawk, as the main character, Fighting Force 2 shares almost no DNA with the original game. Hell, it isn’t even the same genre. Fighting Force 2 shifts the series from being a 3D beat’em up game into being a weird Syphon Filter and Tomb Raider rip-off, with a little bit of Metal Gear Solid for good measure. The problem is that it takes the elements of these games but does them so, so much worse.
Stages are dropped for long labyrinth-like levels with their own unique objectives to complete. Most of these objectives revolve around killing enemies until someone finally drops a keycard to unlock a door to move further into a facility or warehouse to do… something. The story of Fighting Force 2 is so poorly conveyed that I honestly could not tell you what exactly was going on or why I would be in certain locations. Levels would just end with Hawk hitching a ride on random vehicles that would then drop him off at the next level with little to no fanfare. I can get behind a game with a nonsensical story if the gameplay at least can make up for it, but my god, the gunplay and exploration in Fighting Force 2 is some of the worst I’ve played, even taking into account the era it came out in. It really is near impossible for me to find many redeemable qualities about it.
For Enthusiasts Only
Overall, I left my time with the Fighting Force Collection wondering why this series, out of all the other games still trapped on older consoles, was brought back. I’m not upset that it was. Game preservation is one of the most important movements in our industry currently. I just think there are other, much better games worthy of being ported onto modern consoles than Fighting Force.
Regardless, there is a very niche subset of the gaming community that will be thrilled to hear that these games now exist on whatever platform they prefer to play on, and they have been preserved, warts and all, just as they were when they first came out. I’m just not one of them.
Disclaimer: Limited Run Games provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Fighting Force Collection for review purposes.
