Are you ready to Rumble(Fighter)?

Hey guys, 

Rumble Fighter is a game one of my good friends turned me on to over the summer. When I first looked at the game, I took a furtive glance over the top of the computer to find out if any of my friends could see what I was doing. For the rest of the summer, I got real friendly with Window's minimize button. As much as animated, cartoon-y games are like black op, experimental government designed chick repellent, this PC-only download shocked me. I went from contempt to content and by the end of the summer, It was sad to have to walk away. (Just a little bit. It's not that good) 

Overview:

Rumble Fighter, or "RF" as it's known on the web, is an MMO (Mass Multiplayer Online) animated fighting platform essentially exclusive to the PC. A sequel to the game "Gem Fighter", Rumble fighter already had a relative stable fan base from the beginning. The game's plot is as typically dramatic as you would think an animated game would be. In the beginning, an dark and destructive power known as the Shadow King loomed over the world, threatening to conquer and eradicate any opposition. In a last, ditch effort to save themselves, groups of fighters attempted to battle the darkness that encroached on their lands threatening to consume them as it past over. As pure and strong as their will were, however, all those who fought back were decimated in both body and soul, becoming minions of the evil they were trying to fight. Eventually, the Shadow king was defeated by a group of fighters known as the guardians. After defeating the darkness, the guardians passed down their powers into different objects and weapons so that later generations could use them to fight back if the darkness ever re-awakened. Presently, the seals that hold the Shadow King's power at bay have either been destroyed or are eroding of their own accord. The descendants of the guardians have been battling back and forth with those who were converted to the darkness for the fate of the world. They are losing. Preparing for the worst, the guardians hold a global fighting tournament to find the best fighters they can. 

Whew, That's a mouthful! Now that the stage is set, you can probably see your role in all of this. You join the game as a young fighter hoping to be the best and fight for all of humanity. Pretty cool, huh?

Game Mechanics:

  

                                                                                                        After signing up and downloading the game, a flashy but short opening cutscene OGPlanet, the developers of Rumble Fighter should play. You will then be offered a couple of choices. Not all of the fighter in Rumble Fighter are the same. One important distinctions from player to player is the different classes you can choose from. The world of Rumble Fighter is made of Strikers, Elementalists, soulfighters and alchemists. Strikers are by far the strongest class in terms of hand to hand fighting, and are a usual choice for new players. They generally use items that boost their physical attack power at the expense of any stat, and can easily raise their damage output to 300 damage points a strike. (Yes, this is a lot)  Elementalists, on the other hand,  are essentially the mages of the game. With very high spiritual power (SP), elementalists are able to dish out tons of pain from afar. However, they are pretty pathetic in regards to their other stats make the elementalists a real wild card. Next comes the Soul Fighters, who are straight animals. Literally. Being able to call on the power of their souls to strengthen them, soul fighters have higher than average SP and incredible speed. For all you ninja fans out there, the soul fighter class fits the description of a quick hitting, death sowing arbiter better than any other class. Finally, there are the Alchemists. To me, Alchemists are OGPlanet's answer to the people who value balance over everything. The alchemist boasts high defense and low speed, average strength and  modest SP, and allows you to be more strategic when you fight. They also have some of the coolest transformations in the game. (We'll get to that later, though) After choosing your character and gender, OGPlanet throws you right into the fray, and not in a good way. While I had someone who played before to guide me, I'm not sure how user friendly the RF is to someone on their own. After a little bit of navigating the different menus and screens of the game, players should look for their avatar's personal page. You'll know you're there because you will see a small, Japanese (I think) bad ass staring you in the face while it practices it's battle stance. You should see a row of tabs which you can click to view your items. As a new player, you get a newbie pack that has a few goodies you can and should use. The most notable one will be a small symbol in one of the last tabs in the row: the exocore. The equivalent of turning into a Dragonball Z super sayin, exocores are devices that allow you dramatically augment your powers. While everyone can buy as many exocores as they'd like, some are class exclusive, and can change you from this: 

To this: 

After setting up your exocores, you should be ready to fight. In RF there are tons of items that can help you out that you can buy with carats, in-game currency. Unfortunately, for every item you can buy with carat, there is an equal or better thing you can buy with astros, currency you have to pay actual money for. With lax level requirements, players who should be on your level end up mopping the floor with your ass because they've out bought you, or they got their hands on an item that can be spammed. On the subject of money, your gold stash will seem to take forever to pile up. You earn money by how well you fight. But when the most you can make off of a single fight is 150 carats, and the items that can really help you cost upwards of 7000 carats, you'll be fighting for a long time.

Graphics:

For a downloadable computer game, the graphics that Rumble Fighter totes are pretty lame. While there are some highlights, notably the expression on your character's face as they take damage and the vibrant color and diversity of the stages, I was expecting a little more of a show when I started playing. Not only are the graphics mediocre when you're playing, they can get even worse when your game freezes during lag. The levels you play on are the only show of designing insight, too. Even in the picture above, outside of the stage, the background is pretty bland. Even something weird like a dolphin with sunglasses on or something would be better than what you'll see. OGPlanet just needs to add more motion to their stages, so that they feel more alive.

Final Review:


Overview - 2.5/5: The story of Rumble fighter is interesting, but you wouldn't know about it unless you looked it up on Wikipedia. Not only that, but you can't even do anything about the "fate of the world". The only things there are to do outside of fighting other players online are two "quests" that are completely unrelated to the story, and don't really help you out anyway.  Nice try, but I think that I can speak for everyone when I say the average gamers gonna need something more.

Game Mechanics - 3/5: The game play for Rumble Fighter was pretty smooth. For the most part. Unless you have near excellent Internet connection, you might find yourself moving erratically across the stage, the computer unable to time your punches and kicks to your keystrokes. And in a game like this, timing is everything. Secondly, Rumble fighter has a lot of glitches that have yet to be worked out. One of them is a glitch known in-game as God Mode. If two players attack each other at the same time, either one of them has a chance to render the attacks of their opponents useless. Another is the awful trading system the OGP has left in Rumble Fighter. Instead of being able to directly trade from one player to another, you must first spend your money and "gift" and other player. Then, if you're lucky, the recipient of the gift will send something back to you. Unfortunately, it is so easy to be scammed of all your cash that everyone is wary of everyone else, and gifting has become almost like a delicacy; rare and infrequent. Still, if you can get over those not-so-minor details, you could find yourself sitting in front of the computer screen for hours on end.

Graphics - 2.5: For all the work that might have gone into making sure the game played well, I guess the developers took a break when it came time to make the real meat of the game. I don't care how good a game is, if you have to worry about bruising your eyes every time you look at it, it's going to be a flop. My main critique with the environment in the game is that it seems really dead. There's no movement in the background at all; just 2-8 players running around beating the snot out of each other. If there was something alive out there; a dog that chases after players, birds flying over head, looking for an unperturbed part of the stage to rest and strut around, even shadows from the clouds, I'd be happy. Unfortunately, we are all going to have to deal with trying to make our enemies as dead as the environment.

Final Review - 2.5: As much as I hate to don a score so low on a game I liked a lot, I think there are definitely some better games out there for you to play. There are just too many glitches, bugs, pitfalls and letdowns for me to give this game anything higher than what I have. If OGP starts putting some heart into the games they make, there's a lot of room to turn this game into a masterpiece.

Thanks for reading. Check back often for new posts, videos and information. - Tahj