I’m normally not into a whole lot of fighting games, but when I saw Fight Club was coming out, I made an exception. I’m not sure what I was expecting (or thinking) at the time, but I liked the movie and thought I’d give it a go.

Man, I should have stuck to sports games.

Visually, Fight Club does have some nice graphics and animations. The fighting animations are the same as you’ve seen in any other fighting game. After some series of combos and such, you’ll probably see some blood splatter onto the screen. Obviously, this is part of the “Mature” rating that comes with the game. Also, when you pull off some sort of finishing move in which you break a guy’s leg or arm or something, the graphics reveal the guy’s skeleton where you’ll see the bones break. This is kinda cool, but nothing that hasn’t been done in some sort of fashion before.

However, the graphics take a huge hit in the score because of the “cut-scenes.” When you start the Story Mode (which I’ll get into later), you watch a really cool Full Motion Video where you’ll see how you start getting involved with Fight Club. However, after that FMV, all of the other cut-scenes are slideshows with the characters’ voices spoken underneath. It’s almost as if Vivendi decided the first FMV was too hard to keep producing, so they just stopped with the animations and went with slides instead.

Two other things really peeved me as well. First, after a fight, the winning character’s lips move, although you don’t hear anything. Assume they’re just mocking you for playing the game. The second item is that character creation is a joke. You only get a few different faces, bodies, and pants (yes, pants) to choose from.

On the audio side of Fight Club, things are pretty much same-old. There are lots of “f” words and such, which is also part of the “Mature” rating. The acting is descent, although it’s lessened because of the slideshow production. Other than that, the punches and kicks all are sounds you’ve heard before. Even the bone crunching sounds are a little passé.

I should have realized that Fight Club would be a joke for one simple reason: it didn’t come out until FIVE years after the movie. Let that be a lesson to you all. I haven’t played a lot of games that were good compliments to their theatrical counterparts, but when it takes five years to come out, we should all assume the worst.

Anyways, Fight Club offers up some pretty generic game modes, all of which we’ve seen before. The Versus Mode is obvious (you against the computer or a friend). The Arcade Mode is basically the same thing, although you can unlock rewards and characters. Plus, if you use a created character, you can earn development points for them. The Survival Mode has you fighting as many opponents as you can before your health is empty. Finally, the Story Mode has you going through the ranks looking for Tyler Durden, all the while fighting people. The plot’s boring, and you’ll probably lose interest after a short while.

The only ingenious thing about Fight Club is that your created fighter can be retired after so many fights. It all depends on how much your character has gotten the sh*t kicked out of them.

By the way, you can also head online to take on others, although is it really worth it?

There is also a Training Mode where you can work on fighting combos and things like that. However, and maybe this is why I’m not a big “fighting game” person, there are so many moves to learn for each fighter that I’m not sure they’re all worth it. Again, this may be the case for a lot of fighting games, but that’s why I don’t play them that often.

Meantime, the higher up the ranks you go, the harder it is to beat someone. And since the fights only last for one round (unlike games like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat that can last up to three), you should probably breeze through Fight Club in no time.

Each button has some sort of function in Fight Club, which can get to be a little overwhelming. Your memory card won’t be used up too much, although there isn’t much to save. The same can be said for some of the load times. Since you only see slideshows in-between fights, you won’t have to wait too long for them.

Do yourself a favor if you’re looking to buy another fighting game. Remember the line from the movie: The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. This couldn’t be any truer for Fight Club the game.