NOTE: I originally posted this review on GamePro.com (in the Fighting Force 2 section for some reason)

Taking a cue from games like Streets of Rage, Fighting Force takes you to the streets to get down and dirty oldschool beat 'em up style.

You assume the role of one of four characters who are each in their cliched beat 'em up roles. Smasher's the slow musclebound tough guy, Hawk and Mace are the two mid level characters, and Alana is the fastest and weakest one.

The gameplay is your typical run of the mill beat 'em up where you go area to area beating up any and everyone you see and rinse and repeat. As you can well guess, most gamers won't be impressed due to the repetitive nature of games in the genre alone. Only fans of beat 'em up games will find this game to be worthwhile, but even then, they'll also find it to be a pretty average experience by comparison to other games in the genre.

There's just nothing that really makes Fighting Force standout among it's peers in the genre. The fighting system is typical, characters are typical, and though the game offers a few branching paths, you'll still pretty much see everything the game has to offer in one playthrough. You can't even throw your enemies into each other in this game. You can pick an enemy up and toss him at his buds, but he'll just go flying through them like nothing happened. That's one of the main things this game should have lifted off the brawlers of the past. On the gameplay merits alone, Fighting Force, though still fun for fans of beat 'em ups, doesn't really do anything to standout. That being said, the game does have some good things going for it.

The control is great. Even though it's too old to support an analog stick, this 3D brawler game still controls like a dream with the D-pad. You won't have any trouble getting your character to go where you want them to. The only bad thing that can be said about the controls is that because the back attack button, and the grab button are the same button, you'll often times miss a grab, because your character will go into the back attack motion. It's a small complaint though considering that the rest of the controls are very responsive. It's also fun in the game to destroy many of the objects in the 3D world. Whether it be destroying a coke machine to get a drink, tearing a pipe off the wall, or even destroying a car, the game gives you a number of other items to destroy. You even get rewarded with extra points at the end of each level for your destruction. Also, those who don't like playing alone, can have a friend join them in the two player (how beat 'em ups are meant played) mode which adds some extra replay value.

Bottom Line: Fighting Force is a fun, but average beat 'em up. If you never liked beat 'em ups, then you'll probably hate this game, and even if you do like them, Fighting Force, won't be anything remarkable. The beat 'em up genre is probably the PS1's weakest genre, so pickings are slim for PS1 owners. However, if you don't have a Saturn with which to play Die Hard Arcade, or Guardian Heroes, then Fighting Force might give you a decent fix for your 32-bit beat 'em up needs. Otherwise Gekido is the better choice for PS1 beat 'em up fans.