As a result, Deadliest Warrior has extremely different value in different roles; it won’t be headlining any major tournaments, but it is fun in short, informal doses with friends. Instead of a single review score, the following recommendations are given. If you are...

Looking for a short-term game, perhaps for a few evenings with friends: Deadliest Warrior has much to recommend itself here. The controls are very easy to learn, and each character only takes a few minutes to learn. There is also an obvious appeal from its list of characters ("Want to find out who wins when a samurai and apache fight?" "Sure!"), and the rounds end quickly with lots of spectacle; there goes someone’s arm and/or head! It’s the sort of game I can easily see occupying a group for a few days as they playfully exchange trash talk and just have fun messing around. So long as you’re willing to come to an agreement on what tactics are too abusive for your group’s tastes, then you could probably have fun with this for a little while before moving on. $10 for a few evenings of fun with friends could be a pretty good deal, if that’s what you’re after.

Looking for a long-term, competition-viable game: Pass on this. It simply doesn’t have the depth necessary to be the sort of thing you’ll still be playing six months later, learning every intricate aspect of your character of choice. Instead, if you’re a serious fighting game player you’ll probably have your character mastered in just a few hours or less, and will have discovered some abusive tactics that are both hard to counter and drain the fun out of the game. At $10/800 MSP one can’t really expect it to stand up to retail-priced peers like Tekken 6 or Soulcalibur IV, but the original Soulcalibur is on XBLA for the same price as Deadliest Warrior and is probably better for this style of play.