Fight Club Game Perplexes, Amuses

Thanks to 1UP for its coverage of Vivendi's announcement of a Fight Club videogame for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. As the title might suggest, this is indeed a "3D fighting game based on David Fincher's film Fight Club", and 1UP notes that "you can see Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's nameless narrator in the first round of screens." Vivendi's official press release plays up the "gritty, visceral world" of the film, itself adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's celebrated book, and insists the title will "portray the brutality of street fighting while encompassing the action and story elements from the movie with intense visuals, untraditional moves, and bare-knuckle destruction."

Comments

Anti-violence

[Andy Smith]

According to the director/actor commentary on the Fight Club DVD, the film is anti-violence. So doesn't a beat 'em up game tie-in completely miss the point?

Re:Anti-violence

[Kaeru the Frog]

How do you know the game is pro-violence? Just because it features acts of violence?

My version of the game

[eamonman]

It would be a mmorpg, with you as a recruit. There would already be a hierarchy, with Tyler at the top. You would have to complete tasks, and submit a story to the effect of what/how you did your task. It is then reviewed by your superior, and depending on the believabilty of the story or simply the greatness of your story. Of course, this could all be B.S.-able by people, but it would be more interesting if people didn't and the game was subversive.

Re:I am Jack's...

[culain]

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking awful movie to computer game translations, You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Chuck's View

[Quobobo]

"No, I'm serious," Chuck deadpans. They [20th Century Fox] just sold the rights to the Fight Club video game."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious. And ask me if I care."

"It's all assimilated. Everything," Chuck quietly jabs. "Those things demonstrate nihilism. It demonstrates that everything becomes a commodity, that everything is trivialized and destroyed."

"But that's so raw," I say, confused.

Almost playfully, Chuck smiles and says, "No, it's not, because it makes room for more stuff, more cutting-edge visions."

From ChuckPalahniuk.net

"Untraditional moves?"

[Jerf]

"Untraditional moves?" Are there any even remotely plausible "untraditional moves" left to exploit in a fighting game? We long since left the realm of even faint plausibility, even in the hand-to-hand only sub-genre, and in this era of 20-30 fully realized characters with 100+ moves each in fighting games, what moves could be left?

"Use X, dragon-punch CCW, dragon-punch CW, circle circle square to deliver the dreader flower picking move! Your character will pick flowers and hand them to his opponent, whereupon the flowers will cause the opponent to swoon and loose half of their health."

And I'll lay money that if you substitute "health" for some sort of "love resistance", there's a Japanese game/"dating sim" that has done this. Seriously. (Except maybe the "half" bit.)

What's left?

Re:Hand up who's played the game then...

[the_mad_poster]

...where losing would be critical for character development, and where things just kinda happen...

I know I'm waaayyyy late on this, but two things that immediately sprang to mind were Ogre Battle and Planescape: Torment.

In Ogre Battle, if your main character won too many battles, the people would stop liking him. Eventually, he'd lose all popular support and you'd lose the game, especially if he won mostly at night (because that made him darker). There was incentive NOT to win too many battles with the "hero".

Planescape: Torment took the "win the battle" mentality right out of the game altogether. Most battles could be avoided. The only place you really HAVE to fight is in Curst and that's only because the guards pick fights with you (since you are breaking into a prison and all). You don't even have to fight the final boss if you don't want to. While there was no incentive NOT to win most battles, you didn't get punished for losing (because your character is immortal) unless you were a REAAALLLLYYY lousy fighter (if you lose TOO much your character goes insane) and you generally didn't get much in the way of experience or loot unless it was a significant battle. There was always some new plot twist pushing you along to your next goal.

I don't think that Fight Club would make a very popular game if it was done right, just like the two above are only popular in their cult statuses. Note that I didn't say GOOD, I said POPULAR. I think, if done properly, it could be an incredible game where it was more important to follow along with the story and character development than to fight. I also think that 22 million caffiene-addled adolescent numbskulls out there are so brain-baked by stupid games like Halo and Tekken that anything that requires a more complex thought process than "push a button to solve a 'puzzle'" is doomed to cult status and low sales figures.

Call me a cynic, but I just don't think the target audience for a 'real" Fight Club game is big enough for the suits at Vivendi to make money selling to, so they're going to go after the typical numbskull crowd of moronic, over-drugged, fast food, "modern" kids. They're going to target the idiots that went to see the movie and left thinking "gee, that was booooring". I remember sitting there at the end of the movie with the guy I went to see it with and we just kind of sat there for a few minutes. Then, I turned to him and said, simply: "disturbing". He wholeheartedly agreed. It's the only movie I've not gotten up at the end of and walked right out of the theatre without a second thought. I can't say the same for most of the other dolts who left grumbling about how "dumb" it was and why there weren't more fights. Unfortunately, the dolts keep the market afloat....