One Must Fall: Battlegrounds

This title uses may of the tired conventions of the fighting genre but manages to keep them interesting with great graphics, clean gameplay, and the potential to cause a lot of damage to a lot of people. [Feb 2004, p.112]

Offers a great and versatile combo system, interactive environments, and an overall refreshing take on fighting games. However, the controls are pretty cumbersome, and can lead to unnecessary frustration.

A little late, but still a good game. But, it's not a game where you must rush out to go buy it now. Unfortunately, it doesn't compare to the games that are out these days.

The game would have been better if the robots had back attacks or other, better options to prevent enemies from getting behind them. Regardless, there certainly isn't anything else out there that's quite like it, so fans of other fighting games should give it a look.

For those of us with excess patience, though, the rewards could be great. Battlegrounds looks fantastic and sports a startling degree of replayable fun. Best of all, in establishing a wide beta tester program early on, Diversions Entertainment set the groundwork for a fanatically loyal player base that will be the key to success in the long run.

It obviously didn't have the budget that it should have as is evidenced by the less than glorious design elements and production values. I've never seen a fighter with such boring menu systems and loading screens.

Has extreme potential to become a hugely admired multiplayer game. But, before that happens the lads at Diversions Entertainment may have to cough up a huge consignment of patches to tweak the many issues we observed throughout gameplay.

Going online will pit you against some opponents that are much more fun to play, but the problems with the clunky controls are never alleviated.

The perspective is wrong, making combat a chore, and playing against other people is a nightmare. Even if you can ignore these faults, it succumbs to another deadly sacrament that affects even the best fighting game: it's repetitive to the point of exhaustion.

The controls are fairly well created however the game moves at a slow pace and unless you have mastered the combos before the match your robot will be laying on his back most of the game.

The idea of bringing fighting into three-dimensional arenas with freedom of movement is excellent, but bigger, multi-floored arenas with more weapon pickups would’ve added more variety and eliminated repetitivity from the simple, round arenas.

Control is one of the most important things to truly let you connect with a game. With OMF I was unable to establish this connection and the game just didn’t really entertain me or draw me in. Fighting, the main thrust of the game, was often a chore.

The online option has potential, but fighting human opponents doesn't improve the core gameplay, which hasn't evolved since I was talking all that college smack 10 years ago. [Mar 2004, p.74]

The experience with different human players gives it an edge, but the edge is much needed to counterbalance the lack of moves and environmental interaction. This provides fun but superficial gameplay that succeeds in small doses.

Once you get used to the quirky, low-budget sensibility One Must Fall: Battlegrounds is a decent fighter, especially for online play. But the random crashes really put a damper on the fun.

Although it's an admirable attempt, in a world with games like "Soul Calibur 2," ambition isn't enough. [May 2004, p.62]

A pretty limited fighter, though its online features save it from beingi a complete loss. [Apr 2004, p.83]