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Ultra-violent, ultra-realistic fight action - just the thing for Xmas!

This is Domark's big game for Christmas, and hmm - it's a strange one. For a start, it's a straight beat-'em-up, set in a small area with a number of characters simply running around pounding on each other. You might have thought these had died a death a while ago as being hopelessly old fashioned and limited, but no - recently a lot of big arcade machiines have appeared using this formula, and they're starting to filter down to the Amiga. US Gold's Final Fight we covered last issue - in rather glowing terms for a beat-'em-up actually - and there's Ocean's WWF and Storm's Final Blow still to come, but this month the great white hope of the genre is Domark's Pit-Fighter and yes, it's a strange one.

Strange initially in the look - this is a game with a gimmick. You can see it in the screenshots easily enough - the characters aren't sprites in the traditional sense, they're animated digitised pictures of real people. Some are professional wrestlers, some are kung-fu types and so on - all a bit blocky and pixelised perhaps but still disconverting in that they look so much more like real people than the sort of characters you'd normally control in a beat-'em-up. Add the blood that splatters out as you strike a blow, the darkened warehouse settings and lack of a rescue-your-girlfriend plot (the whole thing's based on a series of fights for money) and you get something with a very different, rather nastier atmosphere than your average punch and kick game.

Now, this is something that attracted attention excellently in the arcades - you could see people stop and look at the machine in surprise, perhaps banging a few 10ps in out of sheer curiosity - and thus it did its job perfectly. On the home computers, of course. It takes rather more to make an impact. A gimmick that's good for a few 50ps ain't necessarily goind to make something worth coughing up £25 for, and for that reason I'm going to ignore the sometimes spectacular, sometimes silly visuals for a moment and talk a bit about the game itself.

It has to be said it has some clever things about it. As well as a large, animated (in a limited sort of a way) and rather grey audience dotted about the warehouses you fight in (there's not actually a pit in sight) there are four fighters in any one round. Two or three are computer-controlled - in a two player game, you get to team up against htem, then fight the other human player (or a computer clone of yourself in one player mode) in a one-on-one grudge match that comes every third bout. Cleverly the computer keeps track of all four players and makes sure it keeps everyone on screen at any one time - if one guy decideds to face the wrong way and then wander off into the crowd, the camera, if you will, moves back, the figures receding until the screen can fit everything in.

Assorted weapons are dotted about the place (crates you can pick up, knives, sticks and so on) and a wide range of fighting moves also add to the thing, meaning there's a lot more to it than your average IK+ style beat-'em-up. Unfortunately though, it largely lacks the one thing that makes for a good blast-'em-up - feel. Moves aren't really very instinctive - indeed, getting your man simply facing the right way can be a sit of a struggle! - and everything generally feels jerky, sluggish and slightly out of control. Basically then, (a) Pit-Fighter looks interesting, but is ultimately pretty unrewarding to play and (b) really should sound the death knell for straight beat-'em-ups as full price products because even the best of them are simply too limited to justify £25 or anything near it.

Here's the clearest argument yet for saying that games that work in arcades won't necessarily cut the mustard on a home computer, because arcade games are made to be played in short five or ten minute bursts, while a home game you're committed to for hours.

If you really want to go around kicking people's heads in, you'd be better off plumping for the scrolling fantasy setting and sheer variety of, say, Golden Axe, anyday.

Interesting and distinctive looking beat-'em-up converted well to the Amiga - unfortunately the basic game is too limited (and hard to control) for it really to add up to very much.