Given the antimaterialist undertones of the 1999 movie Fight Club, it seems a little strange that it has been spun off into a video game, especially this long after the fact. Granted, Fight Club is a modern classic, and its surprising story, dark humor, and graphic depiction of raw fistfights still hit home today just as strongly as ever. A Fight Club game doesn't necessarily seem like that great of an idea to begin with, but a fighting game based on the movie at least basically seems to make sense. Such a game would hopefully capture the sheer intensity and brutality of the movie's battles between men fed up with a stifling society who are looking for a pure, primal release of all their emotions and frustrations. Unfortunately, Fight Club the game--in stark contrast to publisher Vivendi Universal's far more successful movie-to-game efforts earlier this year--is a resounding failure. Unless you're a masochistic Fight Club fan looking to purposely have your sensibilities offended, then you'd be well advised to stay far away from this game. Fight Club is a lousy fighting game and a lousy tie-in with its namesake.

When you finish Fight Club's story mode--which is a series of mind-numbingly easy and repetitive battles punctuated by poorly prerendered images overlaid with terrible voice-over that is rife with pointless swearing--and which has the audacity to try to tie in with the events of the film, you unlock Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst as a playable character. His distinctively harsh rap-rock vocals, which are completely incongruous with the Dust Brothers' electronic music featured in the movie (and some parts of the game), are also used to quickly establish (in the opening cutscene) that this game isn't going to try to do a good job of being faithful to the spirit of the movie. To be fair, much like how the main character(s) of Fight Club yearned to fight such figureheads as Mahatma Gandhi, William Shatner, and Abraham Lincoln, it's possible that Fight Club fans might appreciate the idea of seeing Durst get the snot beaten out of him.

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Unfortunately, they won't get much satisfaction out of the actual process here, because Fight Club is one of the basest fighting games in years. While the game includes multiple characters from the movie (as well as some original concoctions), they all fall into one of three categories: brawler, martial artist, or grappler. And these three different fighting styles aren't that different from each other, either. Oggy et les cafards.

Characters all rely on basic strings of punches and kicks, and the occasional throw, to do damage. There is a distinctly limited number of moves per character, and a lack of depth that's immediately apparent in the gameplay. You could probably whip through the game's story and arcade modes just by mashing on the punch buttons without even looking at the screen. The game's not horribly broken--it's just bad. There are a few early moments in which Fight Club shows a hint of promise. Some of the moves look painful when they connect, such as head-butts that cause both the victim and the assailant to reel backward in pain (one with a hurt forehead, the other with an apparently broken nose). Other times, blood splashes all over the screen, an effect that's rather shocking at first, but soon becomes repetitive and stale.

Matches also sometimes end with a slow-motion finisher, such as when one fighter breaks his opponent's arm at the elbow. These moves do look nasty, but there are a very small number of them, so their impact quickly dissipates. And, as mentioned, these sorts of moves are the exception. Much of the animation in Fight Club looks stilted and weak, resulting in battles that really look nothing like the savage fistfights from the movie. The game's fighters do bear the unassuming look of the movie's average Joes (notwithstanding Meat Loaf's character, Bob; incidentally, none of the movie stars' likenesses can be found here). Also, the game's fighting arenas are lifted directly from scenes from the movie. But this window dressing doesn't help matters much.