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GF! Archival Version Copyright 1995-2004


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by Take 2 Interactive

Snapshot
Ups: It only costs ten bucks. 

Downs:  Even at a great price, it won't keep you busy for long and it'll be a painful experience.

System Reqs:
Sony PlayStation

 

rev-grudge-1-01.jpg (4986 bytes)Take2 interactive is offering something new to the PSX market-- games that cost ten bucks. This is a pretty cool idea in and of itself, but to offer a bare bone, no frills, crappy graphics, gaming experience is to walk a fine line between a great bargain and a bad game at any price. One thing, straight forward; I believe that games that sell for ten bucks shouldn’t be judged on the same rigorous scale as a game that goes for forty or fifty dollars. That said, Grudge Warriors offers a questionable gaming experience that is difficult to recommend even at such a remarkably cheap price.

Grudge Warriors is a vehicular combat game along the lines of the Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 series. You choose from eleven different gangs each sporting a theme vehicle that comes equipped with its own special weapon, and four conventional weapons which all vehicles have in common. During the course of the battle you will be able to fill a sixth weapon slot with items such as invisibility and invulnerability. Each level contains a number of power generators that must be destroyed. Enemy vehicles and other defenses like wall mounted cannons will attempt to bar your way.

Graphically speaking, Grudge Warriors looks like a very early first generation PlayStation game. This is a nice way of saying that they are ugly. The textures are poor and pixilated, and the pop up is horrendous. Objects will phase in and out of existence right before your eyes, and you’ll just have to get used to it. I wasn’t expecting a graphical juggernaut from such a low budget game, so the graphics were really no surprise, but if you’re going to play it at all you will first have to look past the visual famine.

Although there are eleven selectable vehicles, this moderately impressive number is a bit misleading since all of the vehicles function in basically the same way. There are only a couple of slightly different designs, so all the vehicles are basically cookie cutter reproductions that offer only minor aesthetic differences and virtually no variety. The special weapons have a little more variety in that they look a little different, but there is little difference in their function.

As far as control goes, anyone who’s gone a few rounds with another car combat game will recognize the control scheme immediately. An auto aim is included, which is very fortunate because the manual aim is very difficult and impossible to do if you’re moving. Grudge Warriors could have been improved with more emphasis on the D pad, but as it stands you must use the accelerate button to move forward and the reverse button to move backward. The D pad functions only to turn the vehicle, while the up and down directions have no function, making the control much more awkward than other games in the genre. The biggest problem with the control, and with the game itself, is that it moves so blasted slow. While slugging it out in a death-match should be fast and furious, Grudge Warriors is very methodical as the vehicles plod along in a combat that grows tedious after a couple of games.

My position on Grudge Warriors can be summed up pretty simply. It’s essentially a Catch 22 that leaves little room to recommend the game at any price. If you’re a long time fan of car combat games, than you probably own at least some of the Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 games, in which case you will find the switch to a game of dramatically inferior quality difficult to adjust to, and will be longing for the pulse pounding speed and eye candy that these better games offer. If you’re new to the car combat genre and/or on a limited gaming budget then you’re better off grabbing any number of the Twisted Metal games or Vigilante 8 which are now offered as PlayStation’s greatest hits and run around twenty bucks. Alternatively you can look into used games, or even better you might find used games from the greatest hits line up that will probably be comparably priced to Grudge Warriors. At best, Grudge Warriors will give you a few hours of relatively mindless multi-player action, in which case renting a game is also a suitable alternative. After all, if you don’t have fun while playing the game, then ten dollars is really no value at all.

--Jeff Luther