The premise behind Stake: Fortune Fighters sounds promising - a good old beat-'em-up tournament in the vein of Super Smash Bros. Melee and Power Stone. Unfortunately, the reality is more like death by a thousand paper cuts, as Stake proves through its poor gameplay and dodgy graphics that imitation isn't always flattering.

The eight characters are about as generic as you can get, with a mishmash of ideas pillaged from the Tekken and Virtua Fighter series. You've got your basic warrior type, as well as the obligatory lethal OAP and chick with big boobs. There's a little bit of explanation in the manual as to what these characters are doing at the tournament in the first place, but as far as the game goes, it doesn't make a lot of difference.

Once you've chosen a character it's straight into the action. This takes place over eight maps, with a varying number of opponents for each one. There are a few attack moves per character and some very basic combos, varying from handy range attacks to hard-to-target techniques that just resemble giving your opponent a big push. The back of the box seems to imply some kind of interactivity with the environment, but what that actually means is you can pick up and throw a few specific objects, rather than just uprooting trees and random boulders. There's a bit of fun to be had here, whether you're setting freeze traps, miniaturising opponents or simply lobbing bombs about. There's very little variation and physics to the throws though, and it's all too easy to get caught in your own blast radius.

The maps themselves could be a hell of a lot better - they're very poorly designed with some major clipping issues. Not only can you get stuck in them, but you can also slowly jump further inside the map until you fall out the other side. Things aren't helped by an unwieldy camera system and the fact that, despite a mini-map, you can't actually see all that much of the level at any one point.

There's very little difference between the single-player game and the multiplayer one, apart from the fact that your friends are probably a lot more interesting to play with than the crappy characters. Although this game is so poor you risk losing mates rather than entertaining them.

1. Short-term fun to be had with the multi-player mode

1. Dodgy maps
2. Poor choice of characters
3. Limited attack options
4. Outdated graphics

Power
The characters look fine standing still, but in motion they are jerky and cumbersome.

Style
The maps look okay on a purely aesthetic level, but expect to trip across a few design glitches.

Immersion
Come on, who wants to play with archaic character types? Have you never played a game before?

Lifespan
Fun in the very short term. The limited and repetitive gameplay will soon bore the pants of you.

Summary
Not a bad idea but an overall mess of a game with very few redeeming features. Buy it for someone you loathe.