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Great Multiplayer Online Fighting Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Iron Phoenix is a really interesting combination of two gaming genres. You get the multi-combos of a fun fighting game with the online fun of team combat!

The plot and background is pretty fluffy. A meteorite fell to earth, and special weapons were created with its ore. Now different heroes have grabbed the weapons and are vying for control of the region. In reality, when you enter into combat, you can choose any character you want, choose any weapon you want, and have fun.

The game is set in a Chinese themed world so you get a nice selection of male and female Chinese-style characters. While I really appreciate having females represented, how come they always choose to fight in incredibly skimpy bikinis? The guys are wearing full clothing and armor, whiel the girls wear bras and mini-skirts. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

The graphics are reasonably impressive for a multi-person fighting game. Each character is clearly recognized, fighting in a world full of rippling water, waving trees, glowing balls and flickering light. It's not as pretty as say Halo 2 - the textures are a bit more rough and repetitive. Still, the reflections and lighting are reasonably good.

There isn't much to say about the sound. You can stick with the default soundtrack or play any other music you've loaded onto your XBox, which is a cool treat. There are the typical grunts and clanks as you fight, but that's about it.

Gameplay itself is reasonably varied. Each character has his or her own special talents and strengths. Each weapon has a different range, speed and style. You can really mix and match to find a style that really works well with your gameplay techniques. There are different game modes to give a try to. There are the traditional deathmatch and team deathmatch games. There's a VIP mode where a random team member is the Leader, and if he dies, the other team wins. There's a Giant Kill which is a really interesting idea. One team has just a few players, but they are giants. The other team has a ton of normal players. Finally the Challenge Ring requires a lot of patience, and is sort of a gladiator match. You sit around watching individuals square it off one-on-one.

The maps are nicely varied, from watery to temples to natural and so on. There are lattice-work metal screens, reflective pools of ater, flickering flames in multi-level temples.

It really is a great amount of fun to be in a fighting game involving a lot of teammates, and to be in a fully realized 3-D world. However, we were really surprised not to find any sort of campaign or story mode. Sure, it's fun to go into random combat mode and slash away at enemies. But we really enjoy having objectives to reach and challenges to win.

So I'll give this a 4/5 as a great online fighting game that, if you have friends who also play online, could easily provide months and months of great fun. But if they do a sequel, I *really* hope that they put work into a story mode, so that you can work through each character's storyline.

Rating: 4/5

Absolutely Fantastic!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Iron Phoenix is a great action game! It is a fast-paced game that is loaded with beautifully-rendered special effects. You can play 16-person games through XBox Live. The game is strongly weapons-based, meaning your abilities and moves depend on what weapon you are wielding. And there are some awesome weapons. This will undoubtedly be a great addion to any game library.

Lagfest At It's Best!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Iron Phoenix for the Xbox is a fighting game played in the third person perspective. The gameplay concept is very similar to other melee combat arena games like : Kung Fu Chaos or Powerstone. Iron Phoenix, can be played online or offline with up to sixteen characters on-screen. There are 10 characters to choose from including female characters. You can equip your character with one weapon (nine to pick from), which inlude; daggers, broad sword, light swords and even a large hammer. Your character can perform kicks, punches and special moves combined with your swords slashes. The moves themselves are easy to learn and seem neat in theory. There is also a power attack you can use called "chi" (similar to an enegry blast). You can play with BOTS or with human opponents. The arenas themselves are very large and look beautiful...but the whole game falls apart because of poor performace! The framerate is too low and makes the animation look jerky, and this problem is also present on the OFFLINE matches! The characters look drab and boring, they look very old school and could have been done on an older console like the PSONE or N64! The character animation lack fluidity that many other games have, every character moves stiffly and look fake! The camera is never in the right position and this will annoy you. I also hated Heavy Metal Music and this game has plenty of it.

Pros:
+good level designs
+the arenas look great
+good fighting techniques
+play offline with BOTS
+BOTS are very good
+XBOX Live up to 16 players

Cons:
-crappy camera angles
-low framerate
-jerky character animations
-not enough weapon variety
-heavy metal music
-ugly, stiff looking characters
-need more game modes
-lots of lag on XBOX Live

To hyped up for its own good.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Combat in this game is to fast and the characters are to hard to control and their power and speed is to unbalanced.

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