Opinion: Fighting Force deserves a reboot
In my opinion, Fighting Force was one of the best games to be released on PlayStation. It had four main characters that played very differently and the campaign was simple, yet explosive. At least it was to me who at the time of its release was 7 years old.
I know the market right now is saturated with remakes, remasters, and reboots. But, I have a strong suspicion that Fighting Force may have a place in the current gaming generation.
Fighting Force initially came out in 1997. The graphics weren’t the best, but we didn’t know any better. But even though it looked like a modern-day Mindcraft world build, it still had fun story progression.
The campaign was about an hour and 30 minutes. You could play the game solo or with friends and the main goal was to make it from the city streets to the main boss, fighting your way through enemy waves in preparation to rid the world of Dr. Zeng who was to destroy the world.
My favorite elements of the game included being able to use your fists, soda cans, rocket launchers, trash can lids, guns, and knives that you pick up off the street to fight the enemies. It’s so simple and yet when you threw a soda can at an enemy it was so satisfying.
My favorite level was the elevator. You take it all the way to the roof of this high rise building where Dr. Zeng is supposed to be, but he gets away. But just having the enemies overflow on to the elevator while you have limited supplies and being forced to decide to fight bare-knuckle style or run for a weapon.
And you had a group of diverse characters too. It kind of played like an action movie, to be honest. You had Hawk, your lead role (handsome type). Smasher was the brute (all of the big enemies looked like him). Mace was cool and had a sassy walk (her kicks were the best). Lastly, Alana who seemed like a boxer type (she was ready to brawl).
All of these character types would fair well in a co-op game today. Think of how Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a co-op experience, only Fighting Force would be in third-person instead of first-person. You can match-make to a full team or play solo if you want, and maybe it could even have a 1v1 environment to go against your friends.
These are just my thoughts. Perhaps Square Enix could consider this. A sequal was made for Nintendo 64 and a third game was canceled in development. Unfortunately, Core Design (the developers) is unavailable at the time of this writing. But hey, Fighting Force could still be a viable option.
