I have to admit that I didn't really believe all of the negative reviews this 
game got when the demo disk was released in Next Gen (or wherever--regardless, 
I never saw the demo disk.)

Anyway, I got this game today from EB.  The only reason I might not return it 
is that it's so amazingly bad that it's almost funny.  Before, whenever I 
wanted to irritate my friends, I would say things like, "Let's play MK now!  
But first I have to enter the Kombat Kodes and stuff.  Here's a FAQ if you 
forgot your Kharacter's Kombos."  (If you pronounce it just right, you kan 
make it very klear that you're using the letter "k" rather than the letter 
"c".  Trust me on this.  It will drive the right sort of friends krazy if you 
do it.)

Now, I can say, "Let's play Iron & Blood.  I love that game!  What subtle 
(almost undetectable) strategy it has.  In fact, I don't know of a game with 
strategy more subtle than Iron & Bloods's."

It reminds me of the old C64 game called "Knight Games."  Does anyone else 
remember that one?  First, you would each choose a knight with some random 
weapon.  Then you'd just sit there pressing the attack button really, really 
rapidly.  What fun.

Hmmmm....  I guess I'd better try to work this into some semblance of a 
review.

1) Music & sound: (5/10)  Low key.  The music seems a little sparse, and just 
quietly  lingers on in the background. The characters say dippy things when 
they win.  (Trust me on this.  They sound really dippy.)

2) Graphics: (6.5/10) Hmmm... They're not that bad.  Something like a cross 
between, say, Resident Evil's and Toshinden's.  The characters move rather 
woodenly and obviously aren't motion captured or anything like that.

They move rather like you'd expect some poorly done claymation characters to 
move.  (Not that they're claymation or anything like that.  On a similar note, 
a friend of mine said something pretty funny about the monsters done with 
computer graphics in the recent Action Pack premiere of Sinbad: "It's really 
astonishing how they can use advanced 90's computer graphics and have 
something that looks almost exactly like bad claymation graphics from the 
60's.")

Anyway, aside from moving woodenly, the graphics are ok, if a little slow.

3) Control: (4/10) Two buttons are for rolling clockwise and 
counter-clockwise.  There are 4 attack buttons: misc, fast, normal, and 
strong.  There are 2 block buttons for high and low blocks.

Jumping is done by double pumping up.  Running is done by double pumping 
either left or right.  When you run, you can guide where you go with the roll 
buttons.  When running, they no longer have you roll; instead, you can stear 
with them.  Yep, you can sit there running all over the place just like a 
little race car all over the screen.  Vroom!

The controls don't seem very responsive, and have a noticeable lag time.

4) Gameplay (5/10) I haven't really played it enough to know, so please take 
this rating with a grain of salt.  Maybe when you've been playing in "Campaign 
mode" for a while, the game starts getting really cool.  For now, though, read 
my comments on "Knight Games" above.  I could be completely wrong in this one, 
however, and it might actually have some gameplay hiding somewhere that's 
tricky to notice.

For now, just keep jamming those buttons, and alternating betwen low and high 
attacks...

Overall: (5/10) Probably return it unless you take some sort of evil delight 
in how horribly it's done.

-Craig

---
Craig A. Jensen
jensen@math.cornell.edu
caj11@cornell.edu