War Gods

Product Details

• ASIN: B00002STFQ
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,622 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

Have you ever come across a game that you really wanted to like, but for some strange reason you just couldn't? That's how I felt about War Gods. Let me put it this way: I'm a huge fan of the Mortal Kombat series, and War Gods possesses enough similarities to make it seem like an old friend at times. It also includes enough changes to give the Mortal Kombat fighting experience a "new" feel. Sounds good, right? Well...let's just say that, ultimately, the new feel I got was one of irritation and disappointment.

The story behind War Gods goes something like this: A really, really long time ago, a spaceship carrying crazy, life-giving ore crashed into the Earth, spreading small chunks of the magic rocks across the planet's surface. Throughout time, various humans have found the rocks and instantly evolved in War Gods. Now they're fighting each other to gather all the stones in the quest to become the ultimate super-warrior. Indeed. It's a dubious mission worthy of this so-so MK clone.

If you've played any of the Mortal Kombat games, adjusting to War Gods should be pretty easy, should you decide to bother. All of the basic moves, like uppercuts, sweeps, and roundhouse kicks, are exactly the same as MK. Moreover, many of the special moves are done in a very similar fashion. The only real difference War Gods can claim is its 3-D environment, which mainly allows the characters to sidestep out of the way of projectiles. War Gods also sports MK-inspired combos, the only appreciable difference being that the combos are longer here. Perfecting these ten-hit combos is just a matter of simple memorization, and they ensure that experienced players will take up to a third of their opponent's life every time they land a successful attack. The game also has fatalities, which range from completely pathetic (Anubis' sarcophagus drop) to completely insane (CY-5's UFO Abduction). These fatalities are extremely hard to do on the N64 controller, as many of them involve simultaneously hitting three buttons and other finger-twisting feats.

On the upside, War Gods' graphics are pretty good. The 3-D arena looks sharp, the characters are fairly detailed, and the backgrounds look good as well. This is probably the first N64 fighting game to hit the market that actually shows off some of the power of this system. The only graphical element that falls short is the blood, which flies out of the character's bodies in huge dollops and manages to look pretty ridiculous in the process. The sound in War Gods is some of the best to come from an N64 game. The distorted, low-quality sound that plagued Midway's Mortal Kombat Trilogy has been replaced with crisp, clean speech and sound effects.

If you're a fan of Mortal Kombat, War Gods is an interesting (albeit unrelated) footnote to the MK legacy. It's a very strange mix, which may leave some feeling unfulfilled. While it has just enough of the MK feel to give it familiarity, the differences will drive purists crazy. However, it is a solid fighter, and probably the best that the N64 has to offer in the fighting arena. --Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars MORTAL KOMBAT FAMOUS UPPERCUT + UNFINISHED PRODUCT = WARGODS, November 5, 2002

By 

fleshybanana "Nairb" (unknown) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War Gods (Video Game)

COME ON, WE'VE ALL PLAYED A WORSE FIGHTING GAME IN OUR LIVES. ..FOR INSTANCE "BIO FREAKS". WHEN "WARGODS" CAME OUT IN 1996 THE GRAPHICS DIDN'T LOOK THAT BAD TO ME. THE MAIN REASON I CAN TOLERATE THIS GAME IS SIMPLE. I LOVE MORTAL KOMBAT, AND TO ME THIS IS LIKE AN UNDER DEVELOPED MORTAL KOMBAT. I WAS TOLD BY AN OLD FRIEND (WHO I RESPECT WHEN IT COMES TO GAMES & COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE) THAT "WARGODS" WAS A MIDWAY EXPERIMENT. THEY DIDN'T WANT TO PUT MORTAL KOMBAT IN 3-D WITHOUT HAVING A GEINI PIG. IT MAKES SENSE REALLY. MORTAL KOMBAT 4 IS A SUPERIOR FIGHTING GAME. I GUESS MIDWAY LEARNED FROM THEIR MISTAKES.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars War Gods seems to lack everything, August 14, 2001

By 

David Kauffman (CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War Gods (Video Game)

Ouch. Midway really messed up. War Gods seems to have a little bit of every 1 vs. 1 fighting game. It can most definitly be defined as Mortal Kombat meets Killer Instinct. (For the SNES) Now based on that you'd think this game would rule right? WRONG! It's a shame they took the worst things about Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct. With practically 2D graphics the game looks horrible. Every time you get kicked this huge puddle of blood just goes flying out of you, which also looks extremely 2D. CPU gets better as you go along, and I don't mean a small bit like it most games, I mean once you kill the first guy the next guy is 10x harder. With a poor variety of characters, extremely sloppy control, and since CPU players can execute specials (Which you have to execute by pressing a series of buttons on the N64 controller) this game gets a 2 in my book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very boring and uninspired, October 24, 2002

By 

E. Batica (MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: War Gods (Video Game)

War Gods was terrible in the Arcade... then why was it brought to the home system??? Seriously, this game already required a labotomy to play because the controls, gameplay and graphics were bad in the Arcade. Now it's even worse on the home system because now you still need that labotomy, a root canal and an eye appointment when they put the blue thing in your eye to play this game!

War Gods is totally unoriginal. It's a total rip of MK and KI combined with the hope of some Tekken and Virtua Fighter. The controls, like I said, were awful. Nothing in this world could help you get used to the poorly thought out controls. And second, the game just isn't fun. It's just not and it's very difficult getting into this game because of all the bad perks about it.

If I could give this game a zero I would. Seriously avoid this one. Granted yes there weren't as many fighting games on the 64 but I'm sure you could find one that was better than this piece of trash.