Fight Crab

Genre: Fighting Game / Misc.

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-4 Competitive (Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Fight Crab, released in 2020 on PC and Nintendo Switch, is an odd Fighting Game that has you controlling a crustacean fighting other crustaceans by maneuvering its claws to punch and grab, with the goal being to weaken the opponent enough to flip them on their back.

This game’s presentation is pretty ugly, and although the 3D characters themselves are fairly well modeled, they don’t move naturally, and the environments they fight in are pretty low-poly and unimpressive. This is paired with an eclectic music that includes generic-sounding actiony music and… er… J-pop, I guess? Suffice it to say, this game looks slapped together and amateurish.

As for the gameplay, players use both control sticks or motion controls to move their crab’s two claws, and both control schemes have issues, with the ultimate one being that you never really feel like you have full control over your crab, and are largely just flailing about hoping to have the desired impact. This is particularly noticeable when your crab grabs a gun and tries to aim with it, only for the player to find out that directing the claw to move in a specific direction seems to be taken by the game as more of a vague suggestion than a command.

Ah, yeah, on that note, the concept of a crab fighting with a gun or holding a knife seems inherently funny, sure… and while I don’t doubt that some will find this game to be a laugh riot, my frustration with the unwieldy controls outweighed any amusement my odd combatant had to offer me in this regard.

It seems pretty clear that more than an actual good game, Fight Crab represents something of a novelty, an odd fighting game with odd controls, largely built around the silly scenarios the game’s designers could dream up involving crabs fighting each other. I suppose that novelty makes the game interesting at least, but that doesn’t change that it’s not a very playable game, and the silly fun of flailing at enemies with your claws will soon give way to the boredom that comes with a game where you don’t really feel like what you’re doing is translating into your intended actions in the game in any meaningful way.

tl;dr – Fight Crab is an odd Fighting Game where players take the role of crustaceans manipulating their arms and claws to fight each other. It’s a novel concept, but it’s rendered largely pointless due to terrible controls that rarely seem to translate directly to what you’re actually intending to make your crab do. As a result, this may be interesting as a novelty, but it’s not a very fun game.

Grade: C-

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