Review: Verdict Guilty

Name: Verdict Guilty - 유죄 평결

Price: £3.99 / $4.49

Available on:  PC (Steam store)

Reviewed on: Laptop 1

Review:

Verdict Guilty is the described as a 90s style arcade fighter on its store page and that really is quite accurate. It evokes the feeling of old arcade fighting games though personally I think it might be by far the fastest fighting game I've played in a long while. The game can move very fast, how fast you may ask?

(Note: this video was recorded in 30 FPS the game runs at a steady 60 FPS normally)

That fast, and I'm not even that good.

What the game offers for its asking price includes:

Arcade mode

Training mode

Offline VS play

Survival mode

and Story mode.

Arcade mode is your standard fight through a series of opponents with a limited number of continues.

Survival mode is fighting through a series of enemies until you're defeated

Offline vs is just that with no online mode so if you're like me chances are story mode.

Story Mode sees you pick one of the 8 characters who are either on the side of the police or the criminals and play through their own individual story with fights both teaching you to play a character and giving you specific requirements to beat the fight. The stories, I feel, are where the game shines as while each one story only takes about 15 minutes to beat they are a all very different stories. This isn't Streetfighter where everyone wants to win the tournament and you only get a story for them at the end. The stories range from what I'd call cliché things such as a hardboiled detective out for revenge over the death of his wife to more comedic stories such as the misadventures of traffic cop searching for her lost dog.

In story mode most fights will have special requirements. Initially it will be things like winning a the fight using only basic attacks; then a number of fights where you can only hurt the enemy with a specific special move; other fights might require you to finish them in a certain amount of time or while already injured. 

One of the best mechanics I find (and sometimes a requirement in story fights) is to use the handcuff / throw mechanic. This mechanic adds what feels like more of a punishment for grabs than most other games with cops being able to handcuff people which stops them attacking for a short time. 2 of the criminals throwing and stunning their opponent which affects controls and movement and 2 other criminals being able to attach a bomb to your opponent that will detonate damaging you opponent (and you if you get too close).

Also while there are only 8 playable characters each character has an alternative character skin (and calling it a skin is a bit unfair as they're very much different character look not merely palette swaps) and those alternative skins show up as their own separate characters in story mode, albeit with the same move set. It's also worth noting while they do have the same moveset as other characters there are often recolours of certain elements related to the moves such as if you call in something to attack the enemy. On top of the 8 alternative character skins who all show up there's 2 additional characters who show up that you can't play (yet due to them not being balanced) one of which is the final boss for almost every characters' story mode story. Also to make it so you're not merely fighting the 4 criminals and 4 palette swaps or 4 cops and palette swaps the stories come up with reasons for cops to have to fight other corrupt cops or crooks to turn on one another for various reasons.

One other mechanic of note is the fact while some character do have projectile weapons such as guns, if you run out of ammo you have to reload them which can leave you vulnerable to counter attacks.  Some characters special moves also can wind up with you hitting yourself such as with the mad bombers ability to lay down mines.

Verdict:

A fast paced game that has quite a variety of stories to explore, overall I spent about 2 hours playing through the story mode with all the characters and about another hour messing around in the training mode and doing an arcade run. It feels very well made and response with some quite nice ideas. The lack of online play will be a turn off for some and limit the how much value people can get from the game unless they regularly play multiplayer games locally though there are 4 arcade modes too, though I only bothered to play the unlocked one and unlock the 2nd arcade mode.

If you're after a fast paced fighting game to play single player for some quirky and mostly enjoyable stories this may be enough for you but I feel for most people they'll want that online play or for the hardcore fighting game community they'll not be interested as their local meets probably won't have people playing this title.

I got the game when it was on sale and for the sale price I got far more than my money's worth from it. However I have to judge the game and score it based on its standard asking price so if you see it on sale you can easily consider the score to be a point or two higher based on the value for money. 

Component Score:

Overall Score:

See I made it all through the review without mentioning that one character has a moved called Panty Shot which does almost what you'd expect.

(Video in 30 FPS, game runes in 60 FPS pretty consistently)