“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

The Nintendo 64 was not known for the quality of its fighting games and War Gods certainly doesn’t help. This is one of those games that seems like the developers were trying to copy what their eight-year-old nephew told them Mortal Kombat was like, only the eight-year-old speaks a language no one understands and the uncle has a degenerative brain disease.

Sadly, some poor kid got this game for Christmas and now he hates war; all because of this game.

Sometimes when we look back at the old school games, we tend to focus on the classics and forget just how god awful a lot of games really were. War Gods stands as a proud testament to gaming’s mediocre to terrible past. War Gods is a horribly constructed, one-on-one fighting game that reminds us all just how bad things could get. While it is certainly no Rise of the Robots, it is still a terrible game and everyone associated with its construction should be ashamed.

As far as story is concerned, there is some kind of plot about a spaceship and chunks of ore, but if you are taking the time to examine the plot of War Gods you are obviously being punished for something. This is the kind of plot you invented when you were eight and you wanted an excuse for your GI Joes to beat up some Ninja Turtles.

The characters are ripped right out of the “Horrendously Stupid Game Characters Catalog”, but at least the controls are clunky and unresponsive. The game feels like a warm up for Mortal Kombat 4, which is like warming up for a face punch by kicking yourself in the crotch.

I always try to find the good in every game I play. War Gods doesn’t really have any redeeming qualities. The animation is poor, the graphics are terrible, the characters are dumb, and the controls are clunky.

Why did I pick this game?

Every once in a while, you should play a terrible game; if only to make you appreciate good games even more. I remembered War Gods being terrible way back in 1996 and I wanted to see what it felt like today.

Terrible.

How does it hold up with time?

Like the sandwich that was left under your bed back in October, War Gods has not aged well. Even if you could peel back the layer of crud that covers it, you probably don’t want to touch it anyway.

You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed War Gods fourteen years ago, and time has only made things worse. Don’t bother to play this one, unless you just want to laugh at the horrendous characters.

Tags: fighter, fighting game, fighting games, Friday Old Games, Mortal Kombat, N64, War Gods

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.