Intrawebz Gaming: Flashback Friday Bloody Rage Retrospect

Retrospect: Bloody Rage

For the flashback game today I've chosen and old fighting game that was based off “Mortal Kombat” and includes many video game, movie, and comic book characters. The game is called Bloody Rage and it was released in 2002 to a several game sites back in the day, but I always played it on newgrounds. I played this game quite often in computer labs in school, because I really liked the character roster. Let’s see how it holds up today.

There really is no story here unless I made one up. Just popular media icons at the time in 2002 duking it out in a death match tournament.

The visuals here are not that great. The characters are all drawn out, but they don’t look good at all. The bodies for everyone are the same template with just different colors and accessories. The levels also look really bad, and remind me of low res screen savers.

Im on fiya baby!!!

Visuals aside the game play is what made this game fun. I mean there are 18 playable characters. For a little flash game in 2002 that’s impressive. The character roster is just smart, it has all popular choices from different genres. You have Spiderman, Yoda, Bruce Lee, Goku, and many more. What’s also even better is you can create your own custom character and take parts from any of the full character roster ( this probable explains why all the characters are built from the same template). Doing the review, I made a Goku – Blade hybrid. I guess you could call him Blaku. The only thing I don’t like is that every character has the same move pool which means no character is unique, so really playing with anybody in the roster is just for looks than skill. Which really sucks is a lot the characters have weapons, but don’t use them at all because they all share the same move pool. That aside the move pool is pretty big, you can throw fire balls, do round house kicks, shoot harpoons, and many more attacks. You also get a rage bar which charges while you fight, and when it is full, there are 2 rage moves which your character can unleash to do massive damage to the opponent. Like the "Street Fighter" series there are also little bonus stages where you can break barrels for extra points, but it doesn't hurt you if you suck at them. Also like "Mortal Kombat", there are fatality moves which after you defeat your opponent, if you put in right combo you can pull their heart out, punch them in half, throw into fire-pit, and more (I wasn't able to do all of them). There is also strangely no two player mode. I know two people huddle over one keyboard to play a game is weird, but a lot of other games have done it before. I think a multiplier mode would have been a nice addition.

Blaku is ready for you all >:)

For fighting games on the web, it’s not horrible but it has not aged well at all. The single move pool and generic stages make every fight seem just the same as the last, although the difficulty in opponents increases the farther into the tournament you advance. It still is a lot fun, there are a lot of different combos in the move pool and using your favorite character, or your own created one to beat up on enemies is a blast. It still by no means isn't a masterpiece but it’s a great little game that’s earned its spot in web gaming history.