Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass [Muffin Games] - $1.99

Previously released games, ported to the iOS. A perfect way to buy back childhood/teenage memories for pennies on the dollar, as we proclaimed in our review of Metal Slug 3. This time, we’ve got our hands on Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass, a Dreamcast title back from one of the best years of Dreamcast gaming; 2000. If you ever played the original, then you already know that Fur Fighters is one of the best and most underrated Dreamcast titles around. Those of you who haven’t heard of Fur Fighters until now. Get ready to get hooked. 

Back in 2000, IGN gave Fur Fighters a rating of 8.3, saying “a wonderful, whimsical personality radiates from the lavishly detailed characters and surroundings” and that “Fur Fighters is like nothing else in the gaming scene.” And they couldn’t be more right. At the time, the graphics, characters, story, gameplay, all of it was incredibly well done, looked beautiful, and was, in fact, like nothing else gamers had seen before. In Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass, you’ll control 6 different characters, each with their own special and unique abilities, taking them on a mission to stop General Viggo, who’d kidnapped the hero’s families and babies, from taking over the world with his army of bears.

As you go from area to area, blowing the bears to fluff, collecting gems that keep the warp gates for each of the characters open, you’ll need to change between each of the characters so that you can use their abilities to reach certain areas, collect all of the weapons, solve puzzles, collect each of the babies who only come to their parents, and progress through the game. The training area at the beginning gives you a very good idea of what goes on throughout the game. In the training area, you’ll need to collect each of the 6 babies, and use each of the characters and their abilities to get through it. For instance, the cat can climb walls which have cat scratches on them, the raccoon can crawl through very small areas, a kangaroo who can jump higher than anyone else, ect. 

Graphically, the game looks just like it did back in 2000. But if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing the original, the world of Fur Fighters is very reminiscent of Super Mario 64. Big blocky objects, basic, but polished animations, and a general cartoony feel to everything. Killing the enemies causes them to blow up in an explosion of fluff, and the characters language is pretty interesting, adding another level of cuteness to the game. Actually, Fur Fighters, from the outside, looks a lot like a game made specifically for kids. But once you get into the game, and start blasting away, and getting into some of the harder puzzles, that perception is put to rest fairly quickly, with the game offering up a pretty decent challenge. 

The only thing that the game really suffers from is the controls. It’s fairly clear that the developers were trying to copy the movement of the Dreamcast joysticks perfectly. But on the touch screen, this results in some pretty funky movement. You’re given two invisible joysticks, one for movement, and one for looking around. But once you touch the screen, and start dragging slightly in one direction, the camera, usually tends to move pretty fast. To really control the game, it requires small swipes to turn and look around, kind of like flicking a joystick. The shoot and fire buttons are halfway up the right side of the screen, which is kind of a pain as well. A lot of times, I’ll wind up shooting when I want to jump, and jumping when I want to shoot. Hopefully the developers will tinker with the controls a bit, and make the buttons configurable to anywhere on the screen. As it is now, the game is playable, but it takes some getting use to, and in the end, could definitely use some tweaking.

Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass is available for the iPad, and priced incredibly low at $1.99. Two bucks for this great game is a steal, and those of you who are lucky enough to have played it in the past already know that. But for those of you on the fence, you really should dive right in. Even with the control issues, which the developers have said that they’re working on, and that some options will be made available in a future update, but until it hits, we won’t really know how it’ll effect the game. The gameplay is fantastic, and offers up a great challenge, and memorable experience. It’s definitely a game you should check out if you’re a fan of mid-school third person shooter/adventure gameplay. 

Posted in: $1.99, 4.5 Stars, Action, Adventure, Dual Stick Shooters, iPad, Port, Syntheticvoid, Third Person Shooter