Is Fight Crab as spectacular and fun as it painted? We analyzed the game that went viral on social networks and discovered everything it offers us. It is time to find out who is the king of the crustaceans.
Surely you will remember that tweet that became so viral that we didn’t believe what we were seeing: Giant crabs fighting with all kinds of weapons. But this is 2020, a year as atypical as it is ideal for games like Fight Crab to arrive.
The Calappa Games game is the exact reflection of what 2020 is like. What we are seeing is so surreal that we cannot quite believe it. But do not understand our words, because it hides more than one surprise inside and we wanted to try it and delve into it to find out if behind so much visual spectacle there is a good video game.
The King of the Crustaceans
Right from the start, the game is presented to the player as something curious and in which seriousness really matters the least. There are no deep stories or some element that unites the different sections of the game, but each one goes for free. In fact, the interface itself mixes fonts without rhyme or reason to the limit of being awkward.
Once we have made the menu, the rest is to play and play until all the scenarios that Fight Crab presents us are finished. The purpose and objective of each fight is to turn the opponent around and hold on for 3 seconds to win. Although it is not as easy as it is written, because to do it, the more we hit him the easier it will be to turn it and the more it will cost him to get back on his feet.
We visit cities, temples, restaurants and even a fish market among other extras that we will unlock at the end that we still laugh at the thought of them. Because this is where your greatest strength resides.
There is a constant feeling of not knowing what is happening on the screen in the first few minutes. You only see outbursts, giant crabs with weapons and music in the style of an anime opening. And even with all this information overload, you laugh.
The absurdity of the moment you are living in is, and as we have said before, comparable to 2020, only that it entertains you. We do not believe that it is an entertainment that lasts for hours, because there comes a time when the feeling of overwhelm is persistent if we play long sessions.
Deep as Atlantis
However, behind so many absurd elements there is a very successful combat system that goes beyond just creating funny situations. For each level that we pass, they will give us coins that we can exchange for weapons or other crabs. This would be irrelevant if they were only mere cosmetic changes, but the reality hides something a little more complex.
Each weapon has its own stats and not all of them are ordinary crabs. We will face and unlock different species of crustaceans that have peculiarities that differentiate them from the rest. For example, there are some species with the longest claws that allow to maintain the distance but that make it impossible to attack at close range.
We can also raise the level of the crab and increase the attributes that interest us the most, choose a companion in arms or select which weapon we want in each clamp. And, as if that were not enough, when receiving damage we can enter Hyper Mode to accelerate our attacks and activate new abilities such as a Kamehameha.
As sunk as the Titanic
But in the face of such complexity, nothing works 100%. In the end, Fight Crab, although it has its own ranked games, is still a game with crabs equipped with deadly weapons, and although you hide a deep system behind you, seriousness sinks into the ocean.
The controls are very rough and even with the tutorial you are not able to assimilate everything that they end up explaining to you. In the end you only resort to throwing yourself against the enemy and hitting buttons to turn the other crab and win. With curiosity, we played some games online with other players in the world and we found that most people did not have a fixed strategy and did the same thing as us: go for it and have a good time seeing what was happening.
Although of course, there were also exceptions of players who took advantage of the virtues of Fight Crab. To give you an example, in an online game a player put a rocket on one clamp and a katana on the other, rotating his body activating the rocket and hitting us with the katana like a whirlwind.
And it is that, in reality, if you know how to take advantage of the virtues of the game you get satisfactory results. We have managed to disarm the rival, rob him and finish him off with his own weapon. Although we can also grab and turn it by making correct use of the joysticks or take it into the void with us to take a tight victory.
The epicity of this game has no limits. Tighter than the battle between Ten Shin Han and Goku. pic.twitter.com/AWnxX66eX0
– Rubén Vázquez (@ RubelDeron7) September 1, 2020
Caught with tweezers
By this we mean that it does not matter if you are good or bad at playing. It doesn’t matter if you’re punching buttons or you’re the Fight Crab Faker because either it amuses you to see how everything that happens is more surreal than the previous thing or you are fascinated by the beating that they have put you with a couple of salmon in hand.
And they do all this with a good physics system. Everything collides with everything and the scenario must be taken into account as one more element in combat. In addition, they give a little push to those situations that happen only if you have physics like those of Fight Crab.
Thanks to them we can interact in a certain way with the stage by breaking palm trees and using them as a weapon, riding on scooters or grabbing your comrades killed in combat to give a couple of blows. As we have said, it is no longer just about winning, but about having fun and watching “see what happens today.”
CONCLUSION
All in all, Fight Crab achieves an uneven finish. Calappa Games manages to generate fun from the concept of what the game is, because in the end, the game attracts by what you see, not by what you play. There is a playable complexity that, exploited, can be quite an entertaining game, but the rough controls do not invite you to continue playing to understand it. However, it does not cause frustration and you can have fun knowing, or not, how to play it. It is far from the unknown depths of the sea, but it is not Atlantis either.
THE BEST
- In short games, it is quite entertaining
- Good physics
WORST
- Its depth ends up dissolving into a button crusher
- An overall uneven finish
- Visually awkward interface
- Rough and confusing control
Right
It is not the latest or the most original, it does not have the best execution either, but it can be fun if you like the genre. Good, but room for improvement.
