Friday Night Fail: Burning Sensation Edition

I recently went to Florida for a few days, driving down (and back home again, much to my family's chagrin) and spending most of a week in the Orlando area. The trip was, almost from the start, an amazing disaster. From the unusually long drive down, to the complete failure of the initial purpose (a friend and I had gone, as she is looking to move down and wanted to job and apartment hunt, neither of which came to fruition), to the fact that every time I wanted to go into the motel pool it was pouring, it seemed like nothing was going right. We tried our best to have as much fun as possible, going out with a friend and hitting up Gatorland Park (we couldn't afford Disney World), but in the end the entire trip just left the sour taste of epic fail in our mouths.

I bring this up as a (in my mind) clever analogy for the Xbox 360 game Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom.

Just like the original plan for Florida, which was filled with strategy and good intentions, KUF has a good premise and seemingly a good plan to entertain players. It takes the franchise away from its more strategic roots, instead offering a hack-and-slash experience in line with Dynasty Warriors or Ninety Nine Nights. There are a variety of characters to choose from, each with their own abilities and stories, and it even has online co-op play. Sounds like a good game, just like Florida sounded like a good trip.

Unfortunately, just like the excursion to America's wang, KUF quickly proves itself to be much worse in reality than it was in the concept.

None of the characters are particularly noteworthy. There are the expected archetypes: dark and mysterious rogue, grizzled old warrior, heavily armored hero, scantily clad blue elven chick (really, a staple of most fantasy-based games. I think there's a law about needing them), and while there are a few differences in the way they each play nobody but the really dedicated are going to care enough to try them all out.

I chose the old warrior, with long grey hair and beard, sporting a musket. Was instantly struck by the fact that, in the cutscenes, he didn't sound like you'd expect a grizzly old fighter to sound. Instead, he talked like an effeminate court jester, which did nothing other than totally jar me out of the character and annoy me. The voice acting for every character was amazingly bad, some of the worst I've encountered in a while, but the total against-type casting in this case was a poor choice.

Still, even the worst voice acting in the world can be overlooked with solid gameplay. I mean, that's what subtitles and volume muting is for. Just like the horrific drive to Florida, with its heavy traffic and violent thunderstorm in South Carolina, if the experience is ultimately solid than the bumps along the way can be ignored.

Sadly, KUF just keeps going on and failing in every which way. The graphics are unimpressive, and while they do have a lot of enemies and effects and such happening at once with minimal slowdown, all the enemies pretty much look the same. Plus, while there are different areas to fight through (jungle, mountains, etc), the backgrounds are pretty generic and there isn't a lot of variety between the different stages in each area. The gameplay is the typical button-mashing inherent in the genre, with some combos and range attacks tossed in for good measure. It's just banging on buttons as you wade through armies of clones, a style that at its best offers some mindless enjoyment (I actually like these sort of games) but here just gets boring fast.

Each character, as I mentioned, has a different story which ultimately intertwines into the larger plot. Their tales unfold in pieces, in a dream world that you access by choosing to sleep in front of statues you'll occasionally find throughout the levels. You can ignore these, completely blowing off the story, and you'd actually miss very little outside of a chance to rest your thumb for a few minutes. The stories are bland and generic, and never really pick up enough steam to justify wading through the game. Instead of offering enough to make you want to continue to the next piece of the story so you can see how it plays out, the short scenes offer no real hooks. The stories are pretty silly across the board, pointless and/ or stereotypical, and don't really give any enticing reason to keep forcing through the mediocre gameplay.

In Florida, it became pretty clear that our reason for going there was all falling apart. Job hunting was going poorly, and no job meant no reason to look for a place to live, so it quickly became clear that we wasted time and money going down there and would gain nothing worthwhile in return.

KUF does offer a dizzying array of items to find, equipment is almost always being swapped out for bigger and better stuff. New armor and weaponry is common, and there are shop statues next to the sleeping statues so you can buy and sell. You can also craft new items by combining what you've got, but once again they injected just enough failure into this to make it not fun. The big flaw in this case is that you have no idea what you're going to make until after you make it, and then there's no way to go back. So you might combine two really powerful swords in the hopes of getting something pretty epic, and end up with something with even less strength than either of the weapons you started with. There's no advanced indication of what you're going to get, and there's no guarantee that you'll make something that's useful.

The multiplayer is solid, at least in the sense that it works as advertised. You and a few friends (up to 4 players over Live) can share in the pain together, hacking and slashing through the adventure. I had the most fun in this mode, mostly because my companions and I were endlessly complaining about the horrible game together and laughing at each other (and ourselves) for playing it. The enjoyment had nothing to do with the game, but rather joking with some friends over the headsets.

On our last full day in Florida, we went to Gatorland, which was actually pretty fun, and while it hardly made up for the failure of the previous few days it at least offered up some entertainment.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom has really no redeeming features. While it tries, and a few times gets close to some fun, in the end it fails across the board and doesn't offer up enough to make it worth putting yourself through the pain. Just like a certain trip South, where even a bit of fun here and there couldn't cover the fact that the entire purpose had ultimately failed.

Even if you really like fighting through hundreds of enemies, play something other than this game.

And if you choose to drive to Florida in the hopes of starting a new life, line up a job and a place before you go down to avoid wasting a week of your precious time.