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Two sides to every story--except this one...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If perchance you come upon any other review for this little-known PSX brawler, you'll find that it is one of the most disliked games in the history of the PlayStation--a fact I had come to discover the hard way about a year ago. See, in Killing Zone by Acclaim and Naxat Co. Ltd., your job is to select one of seven monsters and help him/her succeed in winning a grueling tournament to the death against the remaining six competitors. Victory results in the ascension of that character's race to supreme dominance in the World of Light while failure means extinction of the character's tribe--or so the instruction manual says.

Of course, doing so means having to tolerate some of the most uninspiring visuals ever to be seen on any PlayStation console, which consist of sooty polygonal graphics, jerky animation, and nowhere NEAR as much blood as promised by KZ's creators. The gameplay leaves much to be desired as well, seeing that almost all the combination attacks in Killing Zone rely on the repeated mashing of the Square and X (Light Punch and Light Kick) buttons at various intervals. Similarly, the range for most of these attacks is rather short for anyone to truly consider them to be useful, and the aforementioned animation doesn't exactly promote well-timed strategies, which is what most gamers expect of any decent fighting game. Throw in some weak sound effects, an unintelligible announcer, and music that would grate on the nerves of even the most broad-minded video game aficionado, and you've got the most amateurishly constructed PSX "beat-em-up" of all time. Even the game's "Auto Mode," where challengers must play the role of coach to a bloodthirsty battler of their choice, is quite unrewarding (not to mention aggravating). Heck, there aren't even any FMVs available to help tell the story behind the game, and the credits don't even scroll at the end; all a successful player will receive is a record of how long it took him/her to defeat a given opponent, how much damage he or she took in the process, etc., followed by a single screen of everyone who allegedly worked on this title--and without informing the gamer of each person's supposed contribution to its development. The only real perk KZ has, therefore, is its cast of characters, who--impressive as they are--nevertheless fail in granting any merit to this "black sheep" among PlayStation fighters.

All in all, take my advice: Instead of being the fool I was, do yourselves a favor and heed the warning cries of other video game reviewers when they insist you avoid playing Killing Zone at ALL costs. Tragic as it is, there's only ONE side to this story.

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