01-04-2020, 07:58 PM
Review: LastFight – A Weak Clone Of Capcom’s Legendary Power Stone
<div><div class="media_block"><a href="http://images.nintendolife.com/67e5348e562fc/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/67e5348e562fc/small.jpg" class="media_thumbnail"></a></div>
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<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 1 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101893/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101893/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 1 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Piranaking’s <strong><a href="http://www.nintendolife.com/games/nintendo-switch/lastfight">LastFight</a></strong> attempts to recapture the crazy multiplayer chaos of Capcom’s classic <strong>Power Stone</strong> series, lifting its signature chaotic gameplay wholesale and transplanting it into the world of cult comic book <strong>Lastman</strong>. All of the most recognisable elements of Power Stone – small 3D fighting arenas, numerous objects and weapons that litter stages to fling and fire at your opponents and the ability to transform into a temporarily hulked-out version of yourself by collecting and holding three power stones – are present and correct here. While Piranaking <em>has</em> managed to inject its game with a decent sense style and a unique identity through the use of characters from the Lastman universe, all of its good work is almost entirely undone by clunky, unsatisfying gameplay, disappointing enemy A.I, a severe lack of modes and a bizarre lack of any online co-operative play.</p>
<p>Although the moment-to-moment gameplay in LastFight, at its most basic level, is heavily reminiscent of Capcom’s classic party fighter – and fans will immediately feel at home – at every conceivable turn, it’s the fourteen-year-old game that outdoes this latest attempt to revive the popular genre. The campaign mode here – which is inexplicably only playable in solo – lasts all of thirty minutes and features a nonsensical, barebones story about a bunch of fighters who’ve gone a bit mad on a drug called Anitrans and kidnapped the girlfriend of Richard Aldana, the hero of the Lastman comic series. It’s a total waste of the golden opportunity to set the game in an established comic book universe, which <em>should</em> have given the developers an engaging and fun backdrop to the heart of the game – and does absolutely nothing to give its characters any sort of identity or personality.</p>
<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 2 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101889/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101889/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 2 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Speaking of the characters here, the roster of ten available fighters – each with a name that very lamely seems to be referencing some sort of illegal drug or other – may all look unique, but in practice, they control and fight so similarly that, besides a unique special attack, it really doesn’t matter who you choose to take into an arena. Adding to this disappointment is the fact that the enemy AI is disappointingly one-note and bizarrely easy to overcome. We found that, for the most part, simply running around arenas in a circle and throwing objects at your adversary when you have space is enough to deal with everyone we encountered during the campaign.</p>
<p>In Versus mode – where you can choose to fight 1v1, 2v2 or in a 4-way free-for-all – it’s entirely possible to just let the enemy AI to scrap it out until there’s only one remaining, who you’ll then likely have no problem overcoming. It’s a disappointing situation that’s exacerbated by the fact you can’t change the game’s default difficulty setting; there’s no way to make any aspect of this game more challenging, no options to add random fun variables to stages or remove or limit the various throwable objects at your disposal. What happened to the idea of having rocket launcher-only matches or duking it out in a fists-only affair? On top of this, as we already noted, there’s no online play, meaning that if you don’t have a bunch of pals to play local co-op matches with, you’re stuck with a game that struggles to provide much more than an hour’s worth of entertainment across its paucity of game modes.</p>
<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 3 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101898/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101898/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 3 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Besides that short campaign and versus battles you’ve got just ranked battles – a strange faux-online mode that pits you against an endless ladder of opponents who are actually AI-controlled – and Pinball mode, which sees you stripped of the ability to do damage with your regular attacks in favour of throwing large balls at each other – and it’s every bit as bad as it sounds.</p>
<p>If LastFight had managed to make its central gameplay less clunky and provided some more options, online co-op and reasonable AI for the solo player to pit themselves against, there <em>is</em> a decent little party fighter here and – especially against a couple of friends – it is capable of providing some entertainment. We like how a perfectly-timed block regains a little of your character’s health or how dashing at <em>just</em> the right moment provides you with momentary invincibility, but, overall, there’s just not enough polish here. Attacks don’t feel reliable, stages are constructed without much in the way of ingenuity and the whole thing just ends up feeling like a quickly slapped-together version of a <em>vastly</em> superior old classic.</p>
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<div id="conclusion">
<h2 class="heading">Conclusion</h2>
<p>LastFight lifts the classic gameplay of Capcom’s Power Stone series and dumps it into an established comic book universe which it then entirely fails to utilise. It’s sorely lacking in game modes and inexplicably fails to provide any online co-operative gameplay options. The AI here is pretty dumb, stages are bland and the central gameplay aspects are hampered by a lack of polish, from attacks that don’t feel satisfying to long loading times between every bout. If you’ve got a bunch of pals who like to get down and dirty with a party brawler you may be able to knock more than a handful of hours of fun out of this one, but if you’re playing solo, you’ll genuinely struggle to stick with it for any reasonable amount of time.</p>
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https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/01/...wer-stone/
<div><div class="media_block"><a href="http://images.nintendolife.com/67e5348e562fc/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/67e5348e562fc/small.jpg" class="media_thumbnail"></a></div>
<div id>
<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 1 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101893/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101893/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 1 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Piranaking’s <strong><a href="http://www.nintendolife.com/games/nintendo-switch/lastfight">LastFight</a></strong> attempts to recapture the crazy multiplayer chaos of Capcom’s classic <strong>Power Stone</strong> series, lifting its signature chaotic gameplay wholesale and transplanting it into the world of cult comic book <strong>Lastman</strong>. All of the most recognisable elements of Power Stone – small 3D fighting arenas, numerous objects and weapons that litter stages to fling and fire at your opponents and the ability to transform into a temporarily hulked-out version of yourself by collecting and holding three power stones – are present and correct here. While Piranaking <em>has</em> managed to inject its game with a decent sense style and a unique identity through the use of characters from the Lastman universe, all of its good work is almost entirely undone by clunky, unsatisfying gameplay, disappointing enemy A.I, a severe lack of modes and a bizarre lack of any online co-operative play.</p>
<p>Although the moment-to-moment gameplay in LastFight, at its most basic level, is heavily reminiscent of Capcom’s classic party fighter – and fans will immediately feel at home – at every conceivable turn, it’s the fourteen-year-old game that outdoes this latest attempt to revive the popular genre. The campaign mode here – which is inexplicably only playable in solo – lasts all of thirty minutes and features a nonsensical, barebones story about a bunch of fighters who’ve gone a bit mad on a drug called Anitrans and kidnapped the girlfriend of Richard Aldana, the hero of the Lastman comic series. It’s a total waste of the golden opportunity to set the game in an established comic book universe, which <em>should</em> have given the developers an engaging and fun backdrop to the heart of the game – and does absolutely nothing to give its characters any sort of identity or personality.</p>
<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 2 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101889/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101889/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 2 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Speaking of the characters here, the roster of ten available fighters – each with a name that very lamely seems to be referencing some sort of illegal drug or other – may all look unique, but in practice, they control and fight so similarly that, besides a unique special attack, it really doesn’t matter who you choose to take into an arena. Adding to this disappointment is the fact that the enemy AI is disappointingly one-note and bizarrely easy to overcome. We found that, for the most part, simply running around arenas in a circle and throwing objects at your adversary when you have space is enough to deal with everyone we encountered during the campaign.</p>
<p>In Versus mode – where you can choose to fight 1v1, 2v2 or in a 4-way free-for-all – it’s entirely possible to just let the enemy AI to scrap it out until there’s only one remaining, who you’ll then likely have no problem overcoming. It’s a disappointing situation that’s exacerbated by the fact you can’t change the game’s default difficulty setting; there’s no way to make any aspect of this game more challenging, no options to add random fun variables to stages or remove or limit the various throwable objects at your disposal. What happened to the idea of having rocket launcher-only matches or duking it out in a fists-only affair? On top of this, as we already noted, there’s no online play, meaning that if you don’t have a bunch of pals to play local co-op matches with, you’re stuck with a game that struggles to provide much more than an hour’s worth of entertainment across its paucity of game modes.</p>
<aside class="picture embed"><a title="LastFight Review - Screenshot 3 of 3" href="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101898/large.jpg"><img src="http://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/101898/900x.jpg" alt="LastFight Review - Screenshot 3 of 3"></a></aside>
<p>Besides that short campaign and versus battles you’ve got just ranked battles – a strange faux-online mode that pits you against an endless ladder of opponents who are actually AI-controlled – and Pinball mode, which sees you stripped of the ability to do damage with your regular attacks in favour of throwing large balls at each other – and it’s every bit as bad as it sounds.</p>
<p>If LastFight had managed to make its central gameplay less clunky and provided some more options, online co-op and reasonable AI for the solo player to pit themselves against, there <em>is</em> a decent little party fighter here and – especially against a couple of friends – it is capable of providing some entertainment. We like how a perfectly-timed block regains a little of your character’s health or how dashing at <em>just</em> the right moment provides you with momentary invincibility, but, overall, there’s just not enough polish here. Attacks don’t feel reliable, stages are constructed without much in the way of ingenuity and the whole thing just ends up feeling like a quickly slapped-together version of a <em>vastly</em> superior old classic.</p>
</div>
<div id="conclusion">
<h2 class="heading">Conclusion</h2>
<p>LastFight lifts the classic gameplay of Capcom’s Power Stone series and dumps it into an established comic book universe which it then entirely fails to utilise. It’s sorely lacking in game modes and inexplicably fails to provide any online co-operative gameplay options. The AI here is pretty dumb, stages are bland and the central gameplay aspects are hampered by a lack of polish, from attacks that don’t feel satisfying to long loading times between every bout. If you’ve got a bunch of pals who like to get down and dirty with a party brawler you may be able to knock more than a handful of hours of fun out of this one, but if you’re playing solo, you’ll genuinely struggle to stick with it for any reasonable amount of time.</p>
</div>
</div>
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/01/...wer-stone/