Tournament of Legends Eurogamer Review

[crackdude]

...as long as they also keep good ones coming

[nuckles87]

I'll admit, I'm a tad worried that me liking a game like this will ruin any credibility I have.

Most people will just blindly follow a review and condemn anything else.

You remember back in the nineties when we had the fighting game boom? Dozens of "me too" titles with increasingly silly premises, all vying for a piece of the one-on-one fighter pie. Rise of the Robots, Primal Rage, Eternal Champions, they all came out of the woodwork with their own absurd concepts and varying degrees of quality.

Tournament of Legends reminds me of those days.

Strangely, I don't mean that as a bad thing in the least. Read on for the full review of Tournament of Legends.

Tournament of Legends (Wii)
Developer: High Voltage
Publisher: Sega
Released: July 6, 2010
MSRP: $29.95

I stopped playing fighting games after the 16-bit era, mostly because they had outpaced me by miles. I could no longer perform the increasingly intricate combos, I paid no heed to L-cancels and hit boxes, and eventually I just became terrible at any one-on-one fighter that appeared. It's no fault of the genre, I lay the blame entirely on my own lack of ability and willingness to learn. Of course, it means I get to miss out on a lot of cool fighting games.

Tournament of Legends takes us back to a more humble age, when games could be shamelessly silly, characters were allowed to look or sound stupid, and fighting games didn't require ten-hour long button combos in order to be considered enjoyable. High Voltage's Wii fighter is nonsensical, pointless and simple, and that's what I really appreciate about it.

The premise involves twisted quasi-mythological characters beating the crap out of each other so that they can fight Thanatos, the God of Death. You have Marcus, the arrogant gladiator, Narcia, the Gorgon, and Jupiter, the golem who thinks he's a God, among other equally asinine warriors. Each character is one of three classes -- Strong, Rugged or Lithe. Strongs are slow but powerful, Lithes are weak but fast, and Ruggeds are in the middle. It's all fairly elementary stuff.

Characters can be customized with the weapons of any other character they defeat, and can also equip enchantments that bestow special abilities when activated during battle. Vampire, for example, replenishes health with each attack, while Lethal does extra damage and Shock randomly removes an opponent's health.

The combat itself has been designed entirely for the Wii in a 3D combat arena. Obviously, this means that things are somewhat stripped down, but again that is something I really appreciate. Basic attacks are performed by swinging the remote or the nunchuck, while block-breaking strong attacks require players to hold down Z while swinging. Weak projectiles can be thrown with C, and characters can block with B. In addition, each character has four special moves, three unique to their character, one unique to their weapon. These attacks draw from a refillable power meter, and are performed by holding the A button while pushing the nunchuck stick up, down, left or right.

Every attack is absorbed by four pieces of armor that protect the arms, head and body of each character. The armor sustains damage with each hit absorbed and eventually comes off. It's rather cool to see the armor littering the ground after each match, especially when some of that armor involves entire robotic heads.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Wii game without some token waggling, and Tournament of Legends provides. When a character is knocked out, they have a chance to regain their strength and keep fighting up to two times, while the current victor can restore their powers. The downed player must shake the remote and nunchuck up and down to refill their health, while the one left standing performs QTE-style prompts to regain their powers. In addition, various mythological beasts can randomly attack the combatants during a match, requiring QTE motions in order to avoid taking extra damage.

If a round of combat goes on too long, each opponent must restore health and armor in a minigame before fighting again. Rotating the nunchuck restores the health and waving the remote up and down fixes armor. While a nice idea, it does get in the way of the fighting and AI opponents seem to get an unfair advantage, licking their wounds at a far greater pace.

On the normal difficulty, Tournament of Legends isn't the toughest game around, and players will likely only feel a hint of challenge when facing their obligatory recolored selves and Thanatos. Tournament of Legends is a fighting game anyone can play, and while elitist hardcore fighter fans will doubtless be turned off by this, I personally think High Voltage did a commendable job in making such an accessible title that works really quite well on the Wii.

Of course, there are problems, the major one being that Tournament of Legends often doesn't feel responsive enough. Dodging, blocking, attacking and especially the QTEs can sometimes feel too sluggish, and this is especially frustrating against AI opponents who don't seem to suffer the same problems. The game manages to remain fun in spite of this irritation, but it's an irritation nonetheless and one that can sometimes cost precious character health.

Tournament of Legends isn't the prettiest Wii game, nor is it the most deep and engaging. What it is, however, is a good little fighter that makes good use of the console's interface and truly brings back the feeling of playing a fighting game in the nineties. It's no Eternal Champions, but it's easy to get into and provides just the right amount of innocent, unpretentious fun. For under thirty bucks, that ain't too bad!

Score: 7.5 -- Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)

[Shigs]

Good review! Where's it from?

[Sharky]

Over all it's everything I don't want from a fighter... Lets hope Sega at least makes a bit of cash from it so it isn’t a complete waste.

why would you want them to get any profit out of this game ! this will encourage them to make more crappy games  :roll:

Sega don't have any say in this game getting a sequal or not, Like the conduit they stepped in at the last minuite just to publish it. I think its a good idea to do this kind of thing... High Voltage are basically spending all their own money on development and then Sega steps in and scoops up the profits.

[MadeManG74]

Over all it's everything I don't want from a fighter... Lets hope Sega at least makes a bit of cash from it so it isn’t a complete waste.

why would you want them to get any profit out of this game ! this will encourage them to make more crappy games  :roll:

Sega don't have any say in this game getting a sequal or not, Like the conduit they stepped in at the last minuite just to publish it. I think its a good idea to do this kind of thing... High Voltage are basically spending all their own money on development and then Sega steps in and scoops up the profits.

I don't think it's quite that simple or favourable to SEGA as you make out though.

Sega would have to pay them the equivalent of the development costs to get the publishing rights? Even if not, then Sega would have to pay for the distribution, manufacturing, marketing and all other costs relating to getting the game out there, and probably still have to give away part of the profits to High Voltage afterwards.

High Voltage wouldn't be making the game on their own dime and then just give it away to a publisher to take the profits.

[Sharky]

Sega arent going to pay High Voltage to publish a game like this... I really don't think there was a lot of publishers competeing trying to pick it up but High Voltage NEEDS a publisher.

While yes Sega will pay for distribution marketing etc I think those are costs that are recovered pretty quickly... Pretty sure these kinds of deals work out in Segas favour.

[fluffymoochicken]

I'll admit, I'm a tad worried that me liking a game like this will ruin any credibility I have.

Most people will just blindly follow a review and condemn anything else.

And that's why you're going to only follow the more positive reviews and shrug off the negative ones, right?

I don't think that makes you much better than the people you're criticizing.

[fernandeath]

Aww too bad. It saddens me when SEGA publishes games that get such low scores. They kind of destroy sega's rep that they actually need to build up.

I give in to your opinion.

That reminds me of the latest 3D sonic games.
Sure, there are a bunch of people who say "screw the reviews! I love Sonic & the black knight", but, as you said, even if the reviewers were too harsh, it's bad to see Sega games going downhill with critics scores...

I'll look for the game (Tournamento of Legends), though, I won't be proud to say "I own a game that most gamers hates"... They'll start sayng I have a 'bad taste for gaming'...

[crackdude]

"It doesn't matter what the reviews say, if I don't like it it means it's SHIT!"
My way of life.

[Happy Cat]

http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co. ... p?id=18527

The new best worst game ever. Briefly entertaining in a terrible B movie sort of way, but once that wears off this is just insulting.
+  So bad it's almost good
+  Some decent visual effects
-  Awful combat
-  Terrible controls
-  Laughably dated

[Sharky]

- Laughably dated

Isnt that 99% of the games on Wii though.

[MadeManG74]

Sega arent going to pay High Voltage to publish a game like this... I really don't think there was a lot of publishers competeing trying to pick it up but High Voltage NEEDS a publisher.

While yes Sega will pay for distribution marketing etc I think those are costs that are recovered pretty quickly... Pretty sure these kinds of deals work out in Segas favour.

Actually there were apparantly ten different publishers making offers to publish the game:

Really great news. The folks at High Voltage let me know yesterday that since our posting of The Conduit preview, 10 publishers have come calling to bring the game to Wii. I have to think that sooner or later they'll sign on with someone officially and we'll see the title on retail shelves as a result.

http://blogs.ign.com/Matt-IGN/2008/04/23/87599/

The fact is, Sega would absolutely need to pay for development costs in some way. Either through buying the rights to publish for an amount that covers development costs, or by sharing the profits they make with high voltage.

What you're suggesting sounds like High Voltage made the game on their own dime and then just forfeited the profits to SEGA. That's like if if you drew some illustrations and then just gave the rights away to a book publisher for no money. It just couldn't work that way.

[nuckles87]

I'll admit, I'm a tad worried that me liking a game like this will ruin any credibility I have.

Most people will just blindly follow a review and condemn anything else.

And that's why you're going to only follow the more positive reviews and shrug off the negative ones, right?

I don't think that makes you much better than the people you're criticizing.

Uh....no? There have only been four reviews of this game posted so far, Fluffy, and this was #2. I didn't even think we'd be getting reviews until after the game came out.

I'm concerned over the negative reviews this game would get; so obviously I'm following all of them so I can figure out what I missed when I played it at E3.

As for SEGA's stake in all this...if this is like Conduit, then High Voltage paid the dev costs themselves, and then SEGA is just paying for what a publisher would pay for; namely distribution, manufacturing, and advertisements. SEGA wouldn't need to pay HVG for any "rights", all a publisher needs to do is pay for the costs associated with publishing.

Of course, HVG does probably get the majority of the profits. Otherwise the deal wouldn't make much sense for them.

[fluffymoochicken]

I'm concerned over the negative reviews this game would get; so obviously I'm following all of them so I can figure out what I missed when I played it at E3.

With the way you worded that sentence, you make it sound like you didn't know how to judge the game for yourself. How much play time did you get with the game? I remember you writing that you'd be picking up the game yourself when it came out. Did it really blow you away that easily in the amount of time that you played it, or were you carrying too much E3 enthusiasm when you wrote that preview?



That aside, I must admit that the Nintendo Magazine review made the game sound so funny that I might not mind giving it a rental someday... so long as the rental doesn't cost me more than $3.

[Sharky]

Sega arent going to pay High Voltage to publish a game like this... I really don't think there was a lot of publishers competeing trying to pick it up but High Voltage NEEDS a publisher.

While yes Sega will pay for distribution marketing etc I think those are costs that are recovered pretty quickly... Pretty sure these kinds of deals work out in Segas favour.

Actually there were apparantly ten different publishers making offers to publish the game:

Really great news. The folks at High Voltage let me know yesterday that since our posting of The Conduit preview, 10 publishers have come calling to bring the game to Wii. I have to think that sooner or later they'll sign on with someone officially and we'll see the title on retail shelves as a result.

http://blogs.ign.com/Matt-IGN/2008/04/23/87599/

The fact is, Sega would absolutely need to pay for development costs in some way. Either through buying the rights to publish for an amount that covers development costs, or by sharing the profits they make with high voltage.

What you're suggesting sounds like High Voltage made the game on their own dime and then just forfeited the profits to SEGA. That's like if if you drew some illustrations and then just gave the rights away to a book publisher for no money. It just couldn't work that way.

But if you take a game like The Conduit that game was made almost completely on High Voltages money... they didn't have a publisher until last minuite.

I don't imagine Sega paying THEM to publish the game... Sega does not need a game like Tournament of Legends in their line up but High Voltage NEEDS a publisher because they can't do it alone.

If this game had a lot of publishers after the rights to publish then I think that only confirms that it's because it is a VERY sweet deal for the publisher money wise. Because I'm sure they could all tell it wasn't going to be an A grade game, thats not why 10 publishers were interested in this title.