Reviews// Tournament of Legends

Also, in this time where other fighting games have a vast array of people to pick, Tournament of Legends has… ten. And you have to unlock two of those. Sure, there’s a mild element of customisation (beating enemies allows you to use their weapons and upgrades before you start your next fight, not that you’ll notice much difference as you madly flail around) but ten? TEN?

Jagged little swill
So, it plays like stink, has the kind of ideas that scream ‘development by committee’… surely it looks and sounds all right? Well, no. Some of the character designs are pretty good, especially the Steampunk robot Volcanus, but when they start moving about on-screen it all goes to hell.

I know that the Wii is often criticised for not being as pretty as the PS3 and 360, but it’s as if High Voltage didn’t even bother for this one. Everything looks jagged, movement is stilted and the colours are washed out and drab. Have a look at the amazing visuals of something like SoulCalibur, a game that came out on home consoles in 1999 and still impresses today.

The music is bloody awful too, but that’s nothing compared to the voice acting which is tedious and poorly performed. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of cheese, but this totally reeks of Limburger. It doesn’t help that there’s only a few lines of dialogue for each character.

Lurking
Does Tournament of Legends do anything well? It takes some digging to find some positives, but yes, there are a couple of decent touches. The game helps you find your range by showing a radar-like line that goes all decorative when you’re within striking distance, but you’ll still struggle to hit them thanks to the terrible controls.

There’s also an environmental attack for each level from its Guardian, which basically stops the game as you try to copy some on-screen prompts so you can avoid it. It’s a nice idea, just poorly implemented. In between rounds you get the chance to restore some of your energy and armour but the mini-game used to do this is utterly terrible (rotate stick, shake controller, that’s it). Again, it’s a nice idea but the execution is rotten.

That seems to be something of a running theme for Tournament of Legends. Somewhere in there, lurking deep under the skin, was a good idea for a game that mutated and broke down along the way. You have no idea how it happened, or indeed how the hell someone let it get this far.

Wii owners don’t have much of a selection of AAA-titles, and shovelware like this only serves to lessen the overall quality of games on the system. If you see it on the shelf, use that evolved brain of yours and pick up something better, Peppa Pig Adventures, perhaps.

Conclusion
A terrible game, broken in so many different ways. It plays terribly, looks awful, feels like it’s been thrown together in no time at all and has some of the worst controls ever developed for a fighting game. If it were a horse, Tournament of Legends would be shot. Then burned. Then the ashes would be fired into space, never to be mentioned again.

SPOnG Score: Do I have to give it a score? Really? Ugh. 12%. Only because the instruction booklet was nicely printed.