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DEVELOPER
Konami
PUBLISHER
Konami
AVAILABLE
Now
MEDIUM
Cartridge
PLAYERS
1-2
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he videogame community in general is having something of a love-hate relationship with Konami. On one hand, much praise has been sung for games like Metal Gear Solid or ISS64, while on the other hand, games like Nagano 98 have left a very stale taste in our mouths. Originally titled GASP Fighters' NexTREME in Japan, Deadly Arts represents Konami's latest effort in breaking into the 3D fighting genre. To cut a long story short, the game requires you to select one of eight initial characters and fight your way to the end. At first glance, the characters look like quite an eclectic bunch, reminiscent of any generic bash-brain manga you'd find in Japanese news stands. Graphically, Konami has undertaken to the task of placing characters with high polygon counts within large detailed environments. On one hand, the overall look has a nice washed-over effect, making it  look slightly cleaner than the hazy mess in Dual Heroes. However, the price of these nice visual effects was devastatingly high on several levels. Firstly, the high polygon count is probably the reason why the framerate is appallingly low. As a result, the character animations are choppy and the action is difficult to follow, much less even co-ordinate. Secondly, whether or not the graphics played a part in it, the controls are sluggish and unresponsive.  You can basically look down at your controller, press out the buttons, look up, and watch the corresponding actions come to life in a jerky, chuggy fashion. It's really a shame that the gameplay execution is so poor, especially because the concepts borrow from the Tekken and Virtua Fighter games in terms of movement and combo construction. There are even shades of AM2's upcoming Spikeout, where some characters have the ability to flip off walls or generally use the surroundings to their advantage. The reason it's such a shame is because I actually took out the time to learn every combo and try them all out, taking into account the split-second delay between the button press and the corresponding attack. I found that the combo sequences demand precise and exacting attention to timing, similar to the KOF games. It follows that the game can involve a lot of anticipation and timing in countering - but that's assuming that whoever you're playing with has the patience to stomach the framerate and sluggishness. These kinds of gameplay elements are found in all of the great fighting games, and had the game been executed to a significantly higher quality, it might actually have been enjoyable. But with what is on offer with this final product, any gameplay potential to be found in Deadly Arts is academic. All the consumers need care about is that the gameplay is completely ruined by the poor execution.  Deadly Arts also offers a player construction mode where you can make your own fighter. In this mode, you choose the general appearance of your fighter, and then you set out to challenge the other fighters in the game in a bid to learn their moves and become a grandmaster of sorts. There is even a trading system where you can barter for special moves and combos with the other characters. This is certainly a novel mode, giving the player a deeper sense of involvement in the events transpiring in the game. This has the same kind of appeal as the RPG mode in Soul Edge and the Evolution Disc in Rival Schools on the PlayStation. However, such a gem of a mode is really wasted on Deadly Arts.  The time and space used up in creating this mode should have been reserved for better things, possibly even refining the responsiveness and framerate of the game. Before I finish, I should say that I've been very kind to this game. I made a very big effort to like it, particularly because I'm such a fan of the fighting game genre, and I liked some of the ideas that the game offered. To the casual gamer, however, Deadly Arts is a steaming pile of elephant droppings. It actually takes a long, hard effort to derive any sense of enjoyment out of this game, which is not the way it's meant to be. It offers nothing in the way of entertainment that games like Banjo, 1080 or F-Zero X so effortlessly churn out. If it's fighting games you're looking for, even though every fibre in my being detests the series, Mortal Kombat 4 is the best alternative that N64 owners will find at this point in time. Like Dual Heroes, Deadly Arts is a title best forgotten.
-- Kevin Cheung
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