The powers of the Relic are strong. In an effort to keep the Relic and oppress others, the Nezai and Zarai clans join together and call themselves the Chosen. Unfortunately, the Relic is stolen and the Chosen want it back to continue their dominance over the other clans. The other clans want to use the Relic to break free from the oppression brought about by the Chosen. Pick from eight different fighters, each with different skills, and try to claim the Relic. All of the fighters start out with simple combinations and skills, but as a fighter progress through matches, he or she will gain more powerful skills and weapons. If your friends think your skills will not win the Relic, challenge them to a match with the Two-Player mode. Can you claim the Relic for your tribe? Play CRITICOM and find out.
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stopped my controller working on duckstation
This is genuinely the worst feeling video game I've ever played. All the countless other problems this game has almost seem insignificant when compared to just how bad it feels to play.
For example, there's only two modes, arcade and versus. But who cares if there's not more, because I don't wanna PLAY more. The fact that this was a game people could buy in a store is astounding.
For example, there's only two modes, arcade and versus. But who cares if there's not more, because I don't wanna PLAY more. The fact that this was a game people could buy in a store is astounding.
I bought and played this on the PS1 because I got bored. If you're high, this is the greatest game ever made
Criticom on Saturn was the first game I ever bought with my own money. Fighters Megamix unfortunately was too expensive for me to get at Toys R' Us, so I settled with buying this instead, since it was probably marked down massively. My childhood copy of the game unfortunately has gone the way of the dinosaurs like the rest of my old Saturn stuff. But after over a year of owning a Saturn with MODE installed on it, I finally went "you know what? Let's revisit Criticom. I bet it's hilarious".
Puts on the world's most optimistic silver-lining seeing glasses
Well, the characters for the most part look pretty cool. I think it's commendable that they attempted some kind of storyline and tried to connect all the characters to it through intros and endings, even if a bunch of the FMVs were short and incredibly grainy at least on the Saturn version. And despite the music being a bit too low-key at times for a fighting game, I do think some of it sounds pretty cool. I also think giving the characters "levels" where they gain new forms and attacks is kind of a neat idea, even if it's mostly an excuse to fight the same full roster of fighters again (with five mirror matches in total) and most of new forms are just pallete/texture swaps.
I like how Sonork slowly rids himself of his humanity (alienanity??) and just turns into a cyborg skeleton warrior with scythe and gun arms. It's one of two where the character's model actually gets changed to some meaningful degree so that helps, the other is Exene who gets a helmet and armor. Demonica I guess sorta counts in that regard, she becomes more draconic looking, but for the most part she's still a palette/texture swap.
Takes them off
Unfortunately almost everything pertaining to the gameplay element of this fighter is either busted, inconsistent or flat out just bad game design. My review is gonna be mostly about the Saturn version, because that's the one I grew up with.
Well, where do we start? I guess control comes first. You have eight buttons, four are used for throwing different punches and kicks (A, B, X, Y), two are the "special buttons" (Z and C) and the shoulders are used for rolling or "dodge" I think the game calls it in the manual. You can also throw "hard punches/kicks" by hitting A+X and B+Y, which I bet you had absolutely no idea about (I saw it in the PS1 version's manual). The "special buttons" are used for special attacks, like doing this super punishable shoryuken with Delara by pressing forward and Z, or holding one of the special buttons and hitting a combination of the regular punch and kick buttons to initiate a combo.
Yes you can do combos in this, but they're these whack auto-combo type of attacks where the character just initiates the combo with no way to stop yourself. This sucks for multiple reasons, the first is that it isn't intuitive at all and just feels like absolute shit to try and input on the Saturn controller in the heat of the match, especially when dodging is on the shoulder buttons (a REQUIRED move to deal with the CPU in this game). A lot of these combos also have a tendency to launch the character forward, resulting in embarrassing ring outs with no way to stop yourself. The worst part though is that these "combos" tend to have gaps in them where you can easily hit right out of them or even throw your opponent straight out of them. They're just not good at all, and I have had zero decent success against the CPU with them.
The tracking in this game is just absolutely awful, and it's even worse because the manual actually acknowledges it and seems to act like it's supposed to be a part of the game with it recommending movements to adjust your character properly.
Anyone who has played this game for more than ten seconds knows how utterly terrible it feels to fall down in this game. Whenever you take a hit anywhere on the back of your character's model you stumble like a drunkard and lie there for seemingly centuries, while your CPU opponent does a massively damaging "pounce/body slam" attack on you. Even worse is that the tracking in this game is so bad that many times you'll get up in the wrong direction, probably immediately taking another attack to the back and stumbling yet again with the entire process repeating. There are obviously other ways to fall like taking a sweep (crouching B+Y), but most of the time it's gonna happen from you missing your opponent, them just happening to hit your back incidentally due to the horrendous hit-detection or them somehow crossing you up in a jump.
The CPU is just terrible, it's horrific to fight against because it's constantly turtling against you and blocking your attacks while counterattacking at the precise moment or spamming the dodge button (CPU Exene and Demonica can't get enough of it!). This is when you probably start thinking "how the fuck do I throw in this game?", in which I tell you it's forward and both special buttons together. Throwing? Absolutely insane in this game. It does a lot of damage for some characters and it seems to start instantly and override every other attack and isn't techable (because why would this game care about teching?). Some characters like SID also have easy opportunities to ring out due to throwing their opponent behind themselves. Btw SID cannot be thrown by anyone but Yenji in this game, who does this backflip attack over her opponent for her throw. Just bad shit all round here. My method for fighting CPU SID was basically constantly rolling toward him, until he eventually got incidentally pushed off the ring without me throwing any attacks out (The CPU is also very stupid if you haven't noticed). The final boss (also can't be thrown) I baited until he rung himself out with one of the combos he loves spamming. Throwing is one of two attacks you'll be bothering to use against the CPU.
The other? Projectile attacks. Characters get tons of them of varying levels of decency. There's a bunch that have little start up/recovery, the ground ones can OTG and for some reason they have i-frames (or that's just the terrible hit detection again, who knows anymore). Hell, I found out during my playthroughs with SID that he can OTG with his ground-based projectile he gains at lv. 2, which can potentially infinite the opponent until they either die or fall out of the ring. All assuming it doesn't randomly go through them somehow, because the game is very good.
At some point when I started collecting PS1 games (when they were affordable and Einhander was like forty dollars, sadness) I eventually ended up buying a brand new sealed copy of the PS1 version for like ten bucks off of someone. I couldn't really pass it up despite knowing what was in store for me. I booted it up to compare to the Saturn version, and the obvious big differences are the much better graphics, the FMVs looking much less shitty and the characters being a lot more chatty during battle (a downgrade imo). The CPU unfortunately also feels a bit more smart and aggressive in the PS1 version, they're still susceptible to being thrown and being bamboozled by spamming dodge at them, but certain dumb cheese tactics like spamming dodge against SID to eventually ring him out doesn't seem to work here due to them being a ton more frightened by the edge of the ring it looks like. I still beat it though, final boss and SID on PS1 were a pain without throws, especially since there's no timer against Emperor Man. Boring-ass war of attrition, everyone's favorite fighting game pastime, especially when you lose due to the game eating your roll input.
The character select screen also looks different between both versions. I guess because they couldn't get the PS1 screen to work on the Saturn for some reason and just used the loading screen portraits from the PS1 game for it. I actually think the Saturn version looks better, not that my opinion means anything in this comparison since we're comparing versions of a horrific fighting game but I digress.
The passcodes for the level 2/3 versions of characters are also different, because I guess Kronos didn't want people cheating or something? The final boss also doesn't seem to be playable in the Saturn port either, which is only mildly disappointing. He's not that great anyway, since he's just using both Sonork and Delara's move set and nothing actually absurdly cheap and fun like a full-screen psycho crusher or something, though it's nice not being throwable like SID.
At this point I've noticed that I've just written way too much about this game, and spent way too much time with it. Every day after work I go "I need to play Criticom more, gotta find more idiotic shit" like some kind of lunatic. I could be doing much more worthwhile gaming like playing that Kirby game that just came out, but instead I'm spending time finding more bullshit in a terrible fighter I got when I was younger. I just need to face the facts, I'm just a big fly who's attracted to shit in video game format and apparently when the bad games are fighters it just flat out enthralls me. It seriously begs the question, what would've happened if I had enough money for Fighters Megamix and got that instead? Would I not have contracted this guilty pleasure? I seriously doubt it. I could've had a Neo Geo or a Third Strike cabinet in my living room growing up, and it wouldn't have changed a damn thing.
I really wouldn't want it any other way, bad fighting games rule.
Some other random bullshit I've found that I couldn't really fit:
-Gorn's spear seems to have a constant hitbox on it's blade, this means anytime he turns around he could end up hitting you. Potentially also knocking you over if your back is turned, which absolutely will happen. It's the same for Delara's sword, but obviously not as much idiocy could potentially happen there. It was actually mildly annoying while fighting Emperor on PS1, because in a few of his combos his blade can hit behind himself.
-This game has this weird thing where it will let you change your character after beating a CPU opponent in Tournament mode, but not after they beat you. It's normally the other way around isn't it?
-Holding down while getting up or backdashing with certain characters sometimes makes them keep sliding until you either let go of the button or they ring themselves out. lol
-An advertisement for this game boasts "hollywood animation standards". Comedy gold.
Puts on the world's most optimistic silver-lining seeing glasses
Well, the characters for the most part look pretty cool. I think it's commendable that they attempted some kind of storyline and tried to connect all the characters to it through intros and endings, even if a bunch of the FMVs were short and incredibly grainy at least on the Saturn version. And despite the music being a bit too low-key at times for a fighting game, I do think some of it sounds pretty cool. I also think giving the characters "levels" where they gain new forms and attacks is kind of a neat idea, even if it's mostly an excuse to fight the same full roster of fighters again (with five mirror matches in total) and most of new forms are just pallete/texture swaps.
I like how Sonork slowly rids himself of his humanity (alienanity??) and just turns into a cyborg skeleton warrior with scythe and gun arms. It's one of two where the character's model actually gets changed to some meaningful degree so that helps, the other is Exene who gets a helmet and armor. Demonica I guess sorta counts in that regard, she becomes more draconic looking, but for the most part she's still a palette/texture swap.
Takes them off
Unfortunately almost everything pertaining to the gameplay element of this fighter is either busted, inconsistent or flat out just bad game design. My review is gonna be mostly about the Saturn version, because that's the one I grew up with.
Well, where do we start? I guess control comes first. You have eight buttons, four are used for throwing different punches and kicks (A, B, X, Y), two are the "special buttons" (Z and C) and the shoulders are used for rolling or "dodge" I think the game calls it in the manual. You can also throw "hard punches/kicks" by hitting A+X and B+Y, which I bet you had absolutely no idea about (I saw it in the PS1 version's manual). The "special buttons" are used for special attacks, like doing this super punishable shoryuken with Delara by pressing forward and Z, or holding one of the special buttons and hitting a combination of the regular punch and kick buttons to initiate a combo.
Yes you can do combos in this, but they're these whack auto-combo type of attacks where the character just initiates the combo with no way to stop yourself. This sucks for multiple reasons, the first is that it isn't intuitive at all and just feels like absolute shit to try and input on the Saturn controller in the heat of the match, especially when dodging is on the shoulder buttons (a REQUIRED move to deal with the CPU in this game). A lot of these combos also have a tendency to launch the character forward, resulting in embarrassing ring outs with no way to stop yourself. The worst part though is that these "combos" tend to have gaps in them where you can easily hit right out of them or even throw your opponent straight out of them. They're just not good at all, and I have had zero decent success against the CPU with them.
The tracking in this game is just absolutely awful, and it's even worse because the manual actually acknowledges it and seems to act like it's supposed to be a part of the game with it recommending movements to adjust your character properly.
Anyone who has played this game for more than ten seconds knows how utterly terrible it feels to fall down in this game. Whenever you take a hit anywhere on the back of your character's model you stumble like a drunkard and lie there for seemingly centuries, while your CPU opponent does a massively damaging "pounce/body slam" attack on you. Even worse is that the tracking in this game is so bad that many times you'll get up in the wrong direction, probably immediately taking another attack to the back and stumbling yet again with the entire process repeating. There are obviously other ways to fall like taking a sweep (crouching B+Y), but most of the time it's gonna happen from you missing your opponent, them just happening to hit your back incidentally due to the horrendous hit-detection or them somehow crossing you up in a jump.
The CPU is just terrible, it's horrific to fight against because it's constantly turtling against you and blocking your attacks while counterattacking at the precise moment or spamming the dodge button (CPU Exene and Demonica can't get enough of it!). This is when you probably start thinking "how the fuck do I throw in this game?", in which I tell you it's forward and both special buttons together. Throwing? Absolutely insane in this game. It does a lot of damage for some characters and it seems to start instantly and override every other attack and isn't techable (because why would this game care about teching?). Some characters like SID also have easy opportunities to ring out due to throwing their opponent behind themselves. Btw SID cannot be thrown by anyone but Yenji in this game, who does this backflip attack over her opponent for her throw. Just bad shit all round here. My method for fighting CPU SID was basically constantly rolling toward him, until he eventually got incidentally pushed off the ring without me throwing any attacks out (The CPU is also very stupid if you haven't noticed). The final boss (also can't be thrown) I baited until he rung himself out with one of the combos he loves spamming. Throwing is one of two attacks you'll be bothering to use against the CPU.
The other? Projectile attacks. Characters get tons of them of varying levels of decency. There's a bunch that have little start up/recovery, the ground ones can OTG and for some reason they have i-frames (or that's just the terrible hit detection again, who knows anymore). Hell, I found out during my playthroughs with SID that he can OTG with his ground-based projectile he gains at lv. 2, which can potentially infinite the opponent until they either die or fall out of the ring. All assuming it doesn't randomly go through them somehow, because the game is very good.
At some point when I started collecting PS1 games (when they were affordable and Einhander was like forty dollars, sadness) I eventually ended up buying a brand new sealed copy of the PS1 version for like ten bucks off of someone. I couldn't really pass it up despite knowing what was in store for me. I booted it up to compare to the Saturn version, and the obvious big differences are the much better graphics, the FMVs looking much less shitty and the characters being a lot more chatty during battle (a downgrade imo). The CPU unfortunately also feels a bit more smart and aggressive in the PS1 version, they're still susceptible to being thrown and being bamboozled by spamming dodge at them, but certain dumb cheese tactics like spamming dodge against SID to eventually ring him out doesn't seem to work here due to them being a ton more frightened by the edge of the ring it looks like. I still beat it though, final boss and SID on PS1 were a pain without throws, especially since there's no timer against Emperor Man. Boring-ass war of attrition, everyone's favorite fighting game pastime, especially when you lose due to the game eating your roll input.
The character select screen also looks different between both versions. I guess because they couldn't get the PS1 screen to work on the Saturn for some reason and just used the loading screen portraits from the PS1 game for it. I actually think the Saturn version looks better, not that my opinion means anything in this comparison since we're comparing versions of a horrific fighting game but I digress.
The passcodes for the level 2/3 versions of characters are also different, because I guess Kronos didn't want people cheating or something? The final boss also doesn't seem to be playable in the Saturn port either, which is only mildly disappointing. He's not that great anyway, since he's just using both Sonork and Delara's move set and nothing actually absurdly cheap and fun like a full-screen psycho crusher or something, though it's nice not being throwable like SID.
At this point I've noticed that I've just written way too much about this game, and spent way too much time with it. Every day after work I go "I need to play Criticom more, gotta find more idiotic shit" like some kind of lunatic. I could be doing much more worthwhile gaming like playing that Kirby game that just came out, but instead I'm spending time finding more bullshit in a terrible fighter I got when I was younger. I just need to face the facts, I'm just a big fly who's attracted to shit in video game format and apparently when the bad games are fighters it just flat out enthralls me. It seriously begs the question, what would've happened if I had enough money for Fighters Megamix and got that instead? Would I not have contracted this guilty pleasure? I seriously doubt it. I could've had a Neo Geo or a Third Strike cabinet in my living room growing up, and it wouldn't have changed a damn thing.
I really wouldn't want it any other way, bad fighting games rule.
Some other random bullshit I've found that I couldn't really fit:
-Gorn's spear seems to have a constant hitbox on it's blade, this means anytime he turns around he could end up hitting you. Potentially also knocking you over if your back is turned, which absolutely will happen. It's the same for Delara's sword, but obviously not as much idiocy could potentially happen there. It was actually mildly annoying while fighting Emperor on PS1, because in a few of his combos his blade can hit behind himself.
-This game has this weird thing where it will let you change your character after beating a CPU opponent in Tournament mode, but not after they beat you. It's normally the other way around isn't it?
-Holding down while getting up or backdashing with certain characters sometimes makes them keep sliding until you either let go of the button or they ring themselves out. lol
-An advertisement for this game boasts "hollywood animation standards". Comedy gold.