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MTVs Celebrity Deathmatch

MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch was one of those television shows that sounded too good to be true. Then, unfortunately, it was. It somehow got canceled after a couple of years of taking celebrities where they belong – to the grave.

Now players have the chance to relive some of the deadly action. Some of the funniest moments in the show involved Marilyn Manson, who is featured prominently in the game, along with several other celebrities. Tommy Lee, Dennis Rodman, Carrot Top, and more battle it out in a no-holds barred fight to the finish.

The gameplay is fairly simple; each button is assigned a different type of attack, with the Black button performing a special move (when the meter is full) and the White button taunts. Characters have moves specific to them, such as Ron Jeremy’s phallic attacks, Carmen Electra’s BattleBot aids, Anna Nicole Smith’s melons (literally), and, well… you get the idea. The special attack has the action stopping for a moment and your chosen character getting to put the hurt on with a specific move that does some additional damage without being blocked (blocking is done by using the triggers).

There are power-ups that will occasionally drop onto the field of battle; battle axe, rocket launcher, chainsaw, health, etc. These are fun, but it’s the star’s power and brutality that’s fun to use. The finishing moves are pretty cool as well. Mr. T’s van drops from the sky, Marilyn Manson summons the devil to take somebody to hell, Ron Jeremy has two large (disco) balls that drop down, Dennis Rodman rips the head off of his opponent and makes a dunk, you know, the typical deathmatch style finisher…

Playing through Episode Mode, there’s six episodes, with three matches each. At first, only the first three episodes are open for play. Here is where the first problem comes in. In the game’s first’ headline bout between Marilyn Manson and Carrot Top, the prop comedian dies (if you play as scripted). Then, not much later, Carrot Top is back fighting again in another episode. There just aren’t enough celebrities in the game to go around.

Finish the episodes available at first, and the others open up, along with a few unlockable characters. Sure, it’s fun to play as the Mummy or Wolfman, or even pitting Johhny Gomez against Nick Diamond (is gladiator and wizard outfits – you might need to watch a few episodes for an explanation), but there are no more celebrities to unlock other than what has been listed before. There are no hidden surprises. The unlockable celebrities include an alien and some mutant lug called Cousin Grimm – not exactly the cream of the unlockable crop.

The game can be completely “finished” in an afternoon. There’s only six episodes anyway. The only thing that’s left, is the multiplayer, and that’s pretty spartan. There’s no way to create an episode, no ladder ranking, no championship – besides, if characters keep coming back from the dead, what’s the point during the regular broadcast season?

There is a create-a-celebrity, which is decent, but it’s not the reason to pick the game up. You want to see Tommy Lee bash Anna Nicole Smith into the mat. You want to see Cindy Margolis and Shannon Doherty catfight their way to the g rave.

The graphics are decent – it’s hard to replicate the claymation look, but the game does a decent job in replicating the style with polygons. There are clipping issues, but nothing more than one would expect from a typical fighting game.

The celebrity voices are all done by imitators, except for Ron Jeremy. One celebrity, Debbie Matenopolous (soap actress) doesn’t provide a voice for herself, but for another character. What’s up with that? I think she appeared on the show once anyway, so it doesn’t make sense for her to not be in the game.

The commentary is pretty god, but could have been more match specific, especially during the episodes, when the writers of the game knew damn well who was fighting.

While not a perfect fighting game by any stretch of the imagination, it does provide a few hours of fun. It doesn’t take long to get everything unlocked, just a couple of hours, then there’s plenty of multiplayer mayhem that can ensue – and that’s the point of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch.

Maybe the developer and producer wanted a short single player game to get people headed right into the “meaty pulp” of the game. Maybe not – who knows. At least it’s a budget title. Good night, good fight!

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Tags: MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch

Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Nov 10th, 2003 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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