Lucha Fury Review

Lucha Fury is a 2D side scrolling, beat-em-up title from the developing team of Punchers Impact. It is themed around Mexican wrestling as the title suggests and does a great job at presenting it.

 

The game itself offers you a storyline through which you can play with up to 4 buddies (NOTE: offline only!! bummer they didn’t add online MP) or you can go through it solo. Whichever option you choose, the main highlight of this game is the art style. The presentation of this game is what sets it apart from most other titles on the XBLA Marketplace and it sorts of resembles the style of Borderlands but with a slightly more comic book styled approach and with a high level of detail. It also has a great soundtrack that adds the little boost to the cultural feel of this game.

 

 

As you begin moving towards the gameplay however, things start getting a little on the down side. The game offers you the typical mash-em-up combos along with certain special moves that require you to have a buddy beside you. This is about the only real co-op incentive the game contains. Also, you can use environmental weapons to fight your battles. Every so often, there are boss battles in the game and there are breaks from just the fighting aspect of the game to where it focuses on interacting with the environment and such.

 

 

After a while of playing this game though, you begin to lose interest in it since it descends into a repetitive button mashing experience. The combos start feeling stale and so does the nature of the game. It becomes overly repetitive and monotonous with the X-mashing. The game’s mechanics also lack the fluidity often seen in games of this genre. The moves and player controls don’t seem to flow well together and lack the precision required for such a game.

 

 

Almost way too often, you become surrounded by arm flailing enemies from every inch of your character which gets quite annoying as you are prevented from moving away and get killed easily, especially on the higher difficulties.

 

 

Overall, this game seemed to be a great title but with the lackluster execution of the core gameplay, the game falls past most expectations leaving the art style to be the only saving grace. Final verdict: buy this game only if you are a hard core beat-em-up fan, if you aren’t, there’s nothing to see here…

 

 

Game 2 Gamer’s Final Score 2 / 5