One Must Fall 2097 Review - GamersHell.com

Some years ago when I was reading through this norwegian computer magazine which existed back then; Tekno being it's name, there was a short review of One Must Fall 2097, and the bottom line from their point of view was that it stunk. A couple of years later I was walking through my local video shop and I saw the game on the discount shelf, paying little attention to it by the way, because of the lousy picture I had gotten from it. A couple of weeks back I found it again, and as you might've guessed, I decided to review it!

Installation went very easily with a gui-friendly sound card detection system, so usually you don't need to fiddle with dma, irq etc. I also noticed on the Epic Megagames that they've made a patch for the game which fixes various bugs and adding a fairly important feature often referred to as Multiplayer.

What the entire game is all about is as any other Beat'em Up game; fighting. To be bit more specific, in One Must Fall 2097 you are given a choice between about 10 different characters, each with different amounts of skills in endurence, power and agility. After having chosen the dude/gal you like the most you get to choose between 10 very different robots who you will be fighting with. It's pretty hard to explain how they look, but I can tell you that they all have their pros and cons and are all entertaining to play with/against.

When you start a fight with some person you have the typical lines that they say to each other, usually about how much of a king they are etc, you've seen it in the Street Fighter games.

I must say that by having a choice between how fast the game should go makes this game a whole lot better, you see with modern computers and that the default setting is at max the game runs like crazy! A match is over in seconds, so as you might've gathered; it is smart to turn down the speed. When you've beaten up all the people on the list you meet the boss, a major *something russian* who is a pretty badass dude, and since the only way you can fight against him is on the difficulty Veteran and not normal (which is default) you are in for a pretty hard match. Luckily there are unlimited continues so the only thing you loose is the credits you've earned. It did not take me a very long while to finish this game, but I must say that it is the kind of game you want to play several times, and with me the reason is the many choices of characters and robots.

If you install the patch from the website you get, as I wrote earlier, multiplayer mode. You may choose between Modem Link, Serial Link, BBS Link (haven't seen that one in a Beat'em up game before) and through an IPX based network, and since you can install ipx in windows you don't have to worry about the phone bill and getting legacy networking equipment.

The Graphics:
In a way it looks just the way you expect it to look, the levels are very colorfull and fighter'ish with hidden things like spikes that pop out of the wall, electric walls, fireballs that come out of the floor (not the ass), and all of this damages you or the enemy upon impact. The characters and robots all look a lot different. The bottom line is: good graphics for it's style even though some things could've been improved.

The Sounds:
A lot. Basicly a lot of crash, boom and for not to say, bang. There's sounds where you expect them, and they sound the way you expect them. The overall quality is good, and in the soundcard setup you get to choose what kind of quality you'd like. I only tested the highest (naturally), so I do not know how it is below that but I'm sure it's good enough for most.

The Music:
Some theme songs are good, some are not. This one is among the good ones, indeed. To be honest it's awfully catchy, and I wish I had it in .mod format or whatever. Techno'ish ingame music, also with good quality and diversity. The songs could probably be more different from each other, but I'm pleased, and with the fast paced hitting on enter and right shift plus the key pads you will not get tired of hearing it.

The Gameplay:
At the main menu you get to choose between 2 presets; left keypad and right keypad, and if they don't suit you then go to custom. The right keypad preset uses the number pads on the right side of the keyboard and enter plus right shift for punshing and kicking. There is no low-kick, high-kick etc which is kind of sad but I guess Epic Megagames wanted to have the based on fast paced action where you don't think much about what buttons you press like you do in Street Fighter (and the others).

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