Celebrity Deathmatch

The premise is a simple one: “Hey, let’s take a bunch of famous people, make clay models out of them and then have them beat the crap out of each other mercilessly!” Such is the basic concept behind Celebrity Deathmatch, a show that gained a pretty impressive following on MTV. Now, Gotham Games has finally put together a game based on the TV show. Unfortunately the gameplay is extremely bad, being too repetitive, too shallow and too short. Celebrity Deathmatch is an empty fighter that won’t grab your attention, let alone hold it for very long.

You play as a number of officially licensed (albeit somewhat B list) celebs as they duke it out, Claymation style. Among the celebrities are: Marilyn Manson, Carrot Top, Tommy Lee, Jerry Springer, Cleo, Ron Jeremy, Carmen Electra, all five members of N*Sync, and a few more.  Each celeb has a few unique moves at their disposal, but no more than about five or six total for each one.  The gags inherent in their moves can be pretty funny, but they do grow old very quickly. The gameplay formula relies solely on you pounding on the buttons (or keyboard in this case) to beat around your opponent until their life bar goes down and then performing the coup d’ grace, a finishing move that deals the final deathblow to your opponent. These are again unique to your given fighter: Marilyn Manson summons a pentagram that sucks in your opponent and spits out their entrails, Tommy Lee plays their internal organs like a guitar, and the five members of N*Sync will team up and quarter you like medieval horses.

It seems that every aspect of Celebrity Deathmatch gets old quickly, from the repetitive and unrewarding button mashing gameplay to the jokes (which I can count on one hand).

The game boasts a Create-A-Celebrity mode, but even this is way too shallow. You only have a few different traits with which to change around your celebrity, and only two different fighting styles with which to bestow them. All things considered, I was hard pressed to make a decent representation of any celebrity.

The single player game is divided up into a series of episodes, six with three fights each. Since the matches each last a little under a minute, it is quite feasible to blow through the entire single player game in about an hour. And trust me, once you’ve done that and thus unlocked every extra in the game, then there really is nothing else to get out of Celebrity Deathmatch.

The graphics are very simple, but hey, it’s supposed to be clay, right? The player models do an alright job of looking like their onscreen counterparts and will exhibit battle damage like bruises, black eyes and scratches as the match progresses, but their overall presentation seems to be lacking. They end up not looking like clay at all, but merely simplistic polygon representations. The environments are nice, however, although there could have been more.

The sound effects are the one thing that this game really does right. Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond do the commentary, which sounds right on par with anything on the show. Their offbeat sense of humor had me chuckling at points. The celebrity impersonations sound as they did on the show (except for Ron Jeremy who did his own voice over, Lord knows why). The Celebrity Deathmatch theme song is also present, which should make hardcore fans of the show feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Celebrity Deathmatch could have been a good game, given its cult following and funny premise. However, what we end up with is a boring, repetitive and otherwise stale fighting game that will undoubtedly disappoint fans of the series.

Gameplay: 4.5
The gameplay is too repetitive, too shallow and too boring. You pretty much just pound away on the keys until your enemy is dead. The single player mode is extremely short, the difficulty level set for a comatose monkey, and the extras are very slim.

Graphics: 5.5
The graphics do an alright job of representing the celebrities, although they simply just don’t look clay enough. The environments are nice and varied, but there are way too few of them.

Sound: 7.0
The Deathmatch theme has been lifted from the show, and sounds pretty good. The colorful commentary by Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond has been left intact, and can be quite funny at times (although a little repetitive after a while).

Difficulty: Easy
No one should have a problem finishing this game in an hour.

Concept: 5.5
The idea of celebrities getting together and brutally murdering each other for the sole purpose of entertainment is indeed a golden one, but this game simply does not do the subject matter justice.  The game modes are sparse, the Create-A-Celebrity mode is a joke, and there quite frankly isn’t much of a game here.

Multiplayer: 4.5
There is a two-player exhibition mode, but any fun you have playing that will be severely limited by the nasty gameplay.

Overall: 4.5
Fans of the series will no doubt be disappointed with the lousy gameplay and short and shallow presentation.