Street Fighter inspirations may have been one thing, but they would take some of the influence Capcom's tournament fighter and try to cultivate their own style with what SFII established. Mortal Kombat clones, on the other hand, cared not for the fundamentals. During the early 90's, the anti-violence rhetoric in video games spearheaded by Mortal Kombat led to dozens of lame copycats. War Gods wasn't the worst offender, but it holds its ground as a pretty putrid fighting game with few redeeming qualities.

Unlike most of the refuse attempting to emulate Midway's bloodsport in failing efforts, War Gods was PUBLISHED and developed by Midway themselves! With hindsight being 20/20, I can surmise that this was a litmus test they tinkered with to see how a 3D Mortal Kombat could be mapped out and crafted. The game was built from arcade hardware used for Cruis'n USA. I never played the game in arcades, and only experienced it on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 ports. 

War Gods certainly plays like a Mortal Kombat, but in the same way Paul George plays basketball like LeBron James. It adopts the MK control scheme, down to the Run buttons, and high/low punches and kicks. War Gods' biggest problem control wise is, it feels just choppy enough to make it truly enjoyable. At best, I could call the action serviceable, but incredibly generic. This exists at a time when the more fluid and technically superior 3D tournament fighter efforts Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2 were available, not to mention the exquisite Killer Instinct 2 was in arcades. They even lifted the hideous dial-a-combo system the Mortal Kombat 3 games were using in a weird variation (it would eventually be used in MK4, but with more polish), a style I never liked.

The special moves are pretty lame, too, as the chunky animations give no sense of style or pomp. War Gods was at least ambitious with the addition of the "3D" button, a dodge that allowed characters to move through the foreground and background. I'll be fair, fighting games were experimenting with the capabilities the genre could tap into with a different axis. Only Soul Calibur nailed it with the 8-way Run system, while most other offerings played the same way 2D fighters did, but occasionally prompted attacks or evasions utilized the perceived depth of an open field.

War Gods may be far from the worst fighting game of the period, but the game's roster may collectively have one of the most generic, tacky, and forgettable collective of combatants seen this side of Time Killers. Despite dabbling with the staggering might of powerful gods as options of which to unsettle the dust in dynamic fisticuffs, War Gods' deities have all the charisma and presence of community college drama middle-acts who bought their attire from a Spirit Halloween November 1st discount. It reeks of everything that was lame about the mid-90's idea of corporate cool, and also missing the charm of Mortal Kombat's participants. Move over, Kano, Mileena, and Johnny Cage. Make way for the cleverly named Cy-5, Kabuki Jo, and Voodoo. Presenting gods this lame would put atheism on the rise. 

This may have been one of the earlier games to dabble with texture mapping real actor faces onto polygonal models. A neat novelty that would improve as the hardware became more sophisticated, I'll give credit where its due. The tech may have been very young, and I know I beat this topic into the earth on RETRO REBOOT, but it's just not really appealing enough to even have an ironic charm to it. The characters are blocky and stiff, not aided by all of the motion capturing being done by only two performers. This leaves the fighting on par with a backyard wrestling federation.

And because it was the style at the time, War Gods had to cater towards the dying trend of violence with the inclusion of Fatalities. Even by 96, this was becoming old hat, and something that isn't going to do much to get a game over in the burgeoning field of fighters. War Gods' finishing moves aren't memorable in the slightest.   

In closing, a game like this merely exists. Bad music, sub-mediocre gameplay, a lackluster lineup of bargain bin characters, and a challenge so devoid of stimulation, it can actually leech calcium from your bones. Just play Primal Rage.