Battle-X

Apparently not tired of Battling, I move onto the 5th game starting with Battle, the imaginatively named Battle-X. The game is a fighter in which you can pit equally imaginative characters such as ‘Stickman’ and ‘Big Guy’ against each other.

Each character can punch and kick (fancy that for a fighting game) and also has two special moves, which can be activated by holding the right trigger while inputting a combo. Seeing as there are only two special moves, having a button for each would have been much easier to play.

As with other fighting games on the service, Battle-X feels very stilted. Gameplay consists of both players walking slowly up to each other and then tapping punch or kick repeatedly. Whoever gets the first hit in seems to get a random amount of combo hits depending on how often they hit the button and whether the game feels in a good mood or not. Then another player jumps away to another platform and the process is repeated.

Graphics are decent, with the characters being pre-rendered 3D sprites with a few set animations. Backgrounds are a bit blurry, but passable for an XNA game. There are a few sound effects to convey punches, and occasional dialogue from the characters such as ‘Gonna die’ and ‘Stickman’. The music on the title menu is so horribly out of tune it makes reading through the how to play instructions an aural challenge.

Not only all this, but the game is set at the same price point as Street Fighter 2 HF. There’s not much of a competition between the two, unfortunately.

Battle-X was developed by JAD Entertainment LLC and is 800 Points.

This title was 800 Points at the time of writing this review but has since been reduced to 400 Points.