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One Must Fall to Revive Genre

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: March 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

For the past several years, the PC Gaming industry, and in particular the first tier publishers, have shunned the PC Fighting genre due to a lack of market in the early days of the platform. Over time, this lack of content and games has forced many game sites, both online and in print, to stop recognizing fighting games as a spearate genre altogether, grouping them instead with action games in terms of content and reviewing procedures.

One Must Fall:Battlegrounds, in development by Panama City Beach Florida-based Diversions Entertainment, may finally be the groundbreaking game to change all that, re-igniting interest in PC fighting and introducing the world of gamers to the first ever truly multiplayer 3D internet fighting experience. For the past year and 5 months, I have enjoyed the opportunity to play this game as it has developed from a OpenGL-based "rough cut" to the more refined 85% completed Direct3D product that currently plays in a beta pool that has grown to over 400 members.

When first introduced to the One Must Fall game, the first and most striking thing to be recognized is the graphical beauty this game serves up as it pitches together 90 foot bots in gigantic arenas. From the animated fire sparkling aroudn the top of the ring in the fire pit, to the starry night sky twinkling above pharoahs fire, to the glistening beauty winking up from the frozen pierced steel planking that forms the upper structure of the iceberg, this game delivers crystal clear textures, scalable high resolution, crisp colors, beautiful original particle effects, and a robust reflections system. This Direct3D based engine demands a Transform and Lighting capable video card but is sufficiently optimized to allow even low to mid end gamers to play albeit with some lower graphical settings.

We all know that when it comes to gaming, eye candy is nice but it means nothing (particularly in a fighter) if the gameplay isnt up to par. Having already delivered the Gamespy-Hall-Of-Fame One Must Fall 2097 title in 1994 (Published by Epic Megagames), Diversions Entertainment (DE) leaves no doubts and solidly delivers. The control system allows directional movement, 4 basic strikes, jump, and evade. Moving away from the intensity based strikes of some more traditional games, OMF instead gives players the capability to execute left and right side punches as well as left and right side kicking. A single press unleashes a basic move of medium power. Adding a directional press to an attack unleashes a second tier of moves for each bot, allowing players to make quick strikes with each of the four attacks or to make strafing moves with the evade button (double tapping a direction in combination with evade allows a player to dodge in a direction to get around some attacks). Three-button-sequences such as up,down, left-punch create a whole third tier of attack options, allowing individual bots to make use of signature moves of medium to high magnitude, all these without use of the "super" energy. Each bot is additionally empowered with 2 to 3 super moves which create large swaths of individual or area damage, devestating when drawn out in close combat but requring built up energy to use.

Although berift of the long complicated move lists encompassed in a traditional console fighter such as Tekken or Soul Calibre, the OMF combo system is dynamic, relying on players stringing together series of quick, powerful move combinations in order to form multihit combos to devestate opponents. The highest combo that i have personally been witness to thus far is 16 hits, although some beta players have made claims of the ability to score as high as 20 against an opponent. This unique approach to the combo system allows beginners to jump right into combat with the intuitive controls while still allowing more advanced players to make use of memorized move sequences or "skill" combinations against opponents.

The engine powering One Must Fall:Battlegrounds is actually the crown jewel of this game, an entirely custom build by the DE development team. The modularized engine uses a java-like scripting language to set up artificial intellegence routines, game content, game movement, specific articles, and other content loaded in a DE Objects format. The engine also has been constructed to allow highly modifiable game content, recognizing third party content as just as genuine as developer created, with the server controlling what may or may not be loaded for modifications. In addition, the modularized segregation of input, output, control, and interaction functions allows games constructed with this engine to be easily ported from platform to platfom, with relatively little cross platform development time invested.

The graphical, gameplay, engine flexibility, and solid performance of this game have kept me coming back for more for over a year and 4 months, validating several years of waiting in the One Must Fall community. Players will not be disappointed when the game releases later this year, estimated for general release in the second quarter.

The wait is almost over!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As one of the beta testers, I have to say that the wait between OMF 2097 and OMF: BattleGrounds is well worth it!! OMF:BG is fully 3D and it looks outstanding. If you were a fan of the first OMF game, then you will be a fan of this one. You might have seen some screen shots of the game, but not all the screen shots serve the game justice. The demo is coming out soon, so don't base your judgement on the game by the screen shots and what other people are saying, but on the demo.

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've only played the limited test of this game, with 3 out of the 8 HARs, and 3 (+practice) of the 12 arenas, but I can say it's already one of my favorite games ever.

The graphics and sounds are great, but it's the gameplay where OMF really shines, there's no other game I've played that gives as many options and fun in any type of game resembling OMF.

There are a few things wrong with the information here though:
1. The developer is Diversions Entertainment, Tri Synergy is only the North American Co-Publisher.
2. The game is not limited to 6 players, if your hardware supports it, you can play with 20+ players online!
3. The game is only for Windows PC at the moment, not Macintosh.

looks good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

i cant wait for this game I found this game in an old Pcgamer and was interested my the screenshots. i then looked online and found out what it was all about . i can say this game look incredable. the graphics are mesmerising and just ...wow. the game play looks like somthing that i have been looking for in the PC for a while. i loved the game ZOE and this as close as i am gunna get for PC. summed up i cant wait and it will be in my hands the day it comes out

It's a great game. But not for the Mac (yet).

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The platform's wrong it's a PC based game, maybe X-Box, not Mac. ... Beside that - simply great. Check their website www.omf.com for more infos. It's the successor(not sequel) to OMF 2097 - different, but just as great.

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