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Deadliest Warrior Legends review: A stab, crush and cut above
Pipeworks Software's Deadliest Warrior was a game characterized by happy surprises. Most were intrinsic to the over-in-a-second combat the title presented -- nothing's more surprising than having your delicate, evasive foxtrot interrupted by a spear through the face. All, however, served to enforce the biggest surprise of all: Someone made a licensed game that allowed ninjas to engage in one-on-one bouts with vikings, and then they made it good. Much like its predecessor, Deadliest Warrior: Legends is peppered with fleeting, unexpected delights. It also contains a shocker of its own; that the original title wasn't just a qualitative anomaly. The series' second coming is full of so many inspired, innovative improvements over the surprisingly solid original, you'll temporarily forget that it's based around an anachronistic bloodsport that's far too ridiculous to exist, even virtually. Until, of course, Shaka Zulu stabs Atilla the Hun so hard that his torso falls off. %Gallery-127597%
Deadliest Warrior DLC available now, adds three characters and new mode
Have you mastered the art of dismemberment on all of Deadliest Warrior's anachronistic fighters? A DLC pack for the game released today has added a handful of new combatants for you to master, including the Rajput, Zande and Shaolin Monk -- three archetypes from the television series that were chosen for the game in an online fan poll. The pack also includes a medium-range taunt for each of the game's original eight fighters, and a new mode, Skirmish, which lets two players choose four of their favorite combatants and fight the opponent's picks sequentially. The first person to clear out the other player's roster wins, which sounds like a pretty clever way to lengthen the game's typically seconds-long encounters. The pack is available now for 400 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live Marketplace, and $4.99 on the PlayStation Store.
Deadliest Warrior devs reveal 225K-plus sales in postmortem
In a recent postmortem on Gamasutra, the team behind Deadliest Warrior discussed the game's successes and failures. Slotted firmly in the success column are the sales numbers, with Gamasutra noting that Deadliest Warrior has racked up over 225,000 units in sales since its XBLA launch in July (it later arrived on PSN in October). Spike Games' Prithvi Virasinghe and Pipeworks Software's Jeremy Mahler agree that one key to the game's success was its realistic approach to combat. Strangely enough, Spike and Pipeworks independently reached the same conclusion: An approach similar to Square's classic Bushido Blade would help Deadliest Warrior stand out in a genre dominated by combo-heavy fighters like Street Fighter, Tekken and Soul Calibur. The two also discuss the challenges of overcoming the stigma associated with licensed games. The team opted to preview the game to as many outlets as possible to dispel any reviewer's desire to undeservedly write the game off. "We wanted the game to speak for itself on its own merits," recalls Virasinghe. In Joystiq's case at least, the strategy certainly worked.
Deadliest Warrior impales the PlayStation Store today
Spike Games' surprisingly fun and unsurprisingly gory downloadable fighter, Deadliest Warrior: The Game, will make its way to the PlayStation Store later today in the next PSN update. The fighter, which arrived on Xbox Live in July, will cost PSN shoppers $9.99. It may also cost them an arm and a leg. And a head. Or any combination of those appendages. According to an announcement on PlayStation.Blog, developer Pipeworks Software is making plans for a three-character DLC expansion to the game. The only fighter announced so far is the "Rajput," which, according to Wikipedia, is "a member of one of the major Hindu Kshatriya (warrior) groups of India and are a ruling class of the Indian subcontinent." Hey, we learned something today! Thanks, video games.
Review: Deadliest Warrior
There are few things I love more in video games than the juxtaposition of two elements that clearly should not be juxtaposed. It's the peculiar desire which first attracted me to Deadliest Warrior, though, the sincerity of that attraction was questionable. Was I psyched to play a game that finally gave me the chance to see who would emerge victorious in a melee between a Pirate and a Viking? Yes, of course, because that's silly. Was I legitimately excited to play the game itself? Not so much. Fortunately, behind all the comedically anachronistic battle pairings is a brilliantly simplistic and entirely entertaining fighting game engine -- one which rewards second-to-second survival instincts rather than a comprehensive knowledge of esoteric, nigh-impossible-to-execute techniques. If you're a fighting game purist, the absence of dash-canceling or air-to-ground linking might put you off. If you've never, ever understood, nor do you possess any desire to ever understand what those things are, then Deadliest Warrior will land right in your wheelhouse. %Gallery-88124%
XBLA in Brief: Deadliest Warrior, DeathSpank
XBLA is all about death this week. First up we have gruesome, deadly martial arts with Deadliest Warrior: The Game and then we have just, heroic, loot-driven murder with DeathSpank. Honestly, both causes of death have their appeal. Watch the latest XBLA in Brief and see just how fun death can be. [iTunes] Subscribe to XBLA in Brief directly in iTunes. [Zune] Subscribe to the XBLA in Brief directly. [RSS] Add the XBLA in Brief feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [M4V] Download the M4V directly. There are new Xbox Live Arcade games released every week. We realize that our readers are busy, attractive people, and may not have time to download and examine each and every new XBLA game. You've got busy, attractive person stuff to do, after all. Not to worry though, because we've done the work for you, downloading every single trial game and giving you a taste of what to expect. Watch XBLA in Brief every week to see which games deserve a closer look. When you have the time, of course.
Preview: Deadliest Warrior
I worried as I walked to the Spike Games booth for my E3 appointment to check out Deadliest Warrior that I might have been undeservedly kind to the game when I first saw it at GDC. Is it possible I liked the game so much because it was surprisingly un-terrible? Did I enjoy the game solely because I have a thing for preposterous juxtaposition in video games? Was I perhaps tainted from the start by the game's entertaining, edging-on-silly debut trailer? After my second getting my hands on the game, which was recently dated and priced at July 14 for 800 Microsoft Points (the PSN version will come shortly thereafter), I feel confident in saying that I was totally right the first time around. Moreso, the delight I experienced the first time I played the game was only expounded by the arrival a few new anachronistic combatants. %Gallery-88124%
