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Introduction/Plot:
>I guess there are some comics or anything about these Fur Fighters, they seem too well devleoped to be thought just for the first episode of a Video Game. Anyway the plot is the PLOT, the most abused plot ever... the baddie (a bear?) wants to conquer the world, it's up to you to fight him. You are in charge of five nice animals that they'll fight their way along huge levels to free their own babies from the evil bear (btw... by this time bears should be sleeping...). Introduction is typical of acclaim games, with a lot of splash screens telling you about any company that did touch or help in the make of the game, it's not weird that the game was developed for console systems too.
Gameplay/Controls
Or I'm a jerk or they are full dorks, I did try everything to enable the joystick, but there was absolutely nothing to do. So I jumped back on the keyboard, pressed all the keys, still I could not turn or fire, just move like pacman in four directions. So I looked at the mouse and using the middle finger (turned up down of course) I moved it.... Yes baby, in an arcade game they choosed to force you to move with both mouse and keyboards... weird, really weird...
Even with cock-thoght controls (a la doom) the gameplay still result really solid, being close to rayman 2 but with a lot more bullets. Probably if it was not about saving babies with cartoon like characters, having a shoulder point of view, the game would have been a cute FPS.
Levels (6 in total) are huge and shared in more sub-levels, saving occurs everytime you accomplish something or you find a 'swapping' ball. These object will let you change you character in favour of another one, consider each of the fur fighters has its own special attitudes: the dog is a good all around, whilst you will not be able to reach some spots without the kangoroo's jump, another character is way smaller than others so he can slip inside small places, often finding bonus area. Also, when saving kiddies, you have forced to be impersonating same animal as the baby being saved, so in the very first building of the first level, first two babies have to be saved by the cat-girl, the other characters will just avoid saving them (weird but funny...). The energy is represented by the classic 1/100 number on screen and powerups all around will allow you to get back the whole of energy. Again like doom and its clones you will collect new weapons, starting from a simple gun you will finish the game shooting out everything with those nice puppet hands. Energy level doesn't decrease too fast but getting in a head to head with a baddie with a machine-gun will lead to secure dead; It's not that hard to die, but saves occurs often and everything you collected will be inherit after clicking restart, so even if you can't quicksave in each spot like on most FPS, you will not be taken out of the game being forced to restart the whole level on each try.
Well, the game is an high quality one, the sounds were properly grabbed and each of the weapon will make some good rumor, whilst for the speech of the various animals they widely copy rayman 2 choosing to let them make just some rumors instead of having to grab full speech for each cutscene. It did work with Rayman 2, it's well implemented here too, good work. Music genre fits really well, altough no music is a good choice since the game uses surround audio, helping you to know if there will be a bear after the corner of if you're being fired from the back.
Graphics
Good, full 3d graphic engine, with various options that will allow anything having more than 300 mhz to play Fur Fighters fast enough. I did experience some slow down but just when the game was loading something from hard disk, while using the kangoroo you will experience some less fps since it's changing point of view's height on each jump, forcing a full redraw of the screen probably. As with many games the gamma is too dark, and even if you can change it there's still way too many colors on screen, making the game an enemy of your eyes sometime... yes just like Gamer's Hell layout (...oooops...). Textures are extremely well choosen, really giving an huge boost to the game.
Overall
Solid Gameplay, bastard controls, all in a well rendered engine. The plot is well supported with cut scenes and various dialogues, the places are well drawn, giving an idea of living places. This game can really sell a lot, probably for the DC it's a real revolution (they had rayman-2 too, though), whilst for the PC it is just another great option for a christmas present. The target is arcade players, not kiddies since some blood comes out of these Fur Fighters... and we all know that wittout video-games there would not be serial killers.
