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If this game had a voice it would definitively refer to itself in this manner: I am Jack’s dull button-masher. Or, I am Jack’s diluted sense of a cult classic. Or maybe, I am Jack’s unfortunately made game. Or simply, I am Jack’s worst nightmare. Five years after the Palahniuk book-turned-Fincher-film landed a haymaker on theaters, this game is a kick to the junk for anyone who is impassioned about the lauded Fight Club universe.

Size Does Matter

When it comes to game length, some want infinite gameplay (sports games), others want a neverending sandbox (GTA: San Andreas), and others want to finish up before the game hits the 12-hour mark. But Fight Club limps its way into the rarely explored 30 minute realm. That’s if you watch the lousy story that unfolds. Otherwise, you can fisticuff your way through this one in under 20 minutes. While you can play it through time and again, there’s no reason to. Especially since beating it once offers up the least gratifying unlockable ever: Limp Bizkit’s eminently forgettable frontman, Fred Durst.

Got the Look

Even though one of the game’s few positives is selecting Durst and watching while he’s mercilessly beaten, it’s odd that he’s the best looking character in the entire game. Tyler Durden, for one, looks more like Ryan Atwood from the OC than a disturbed, nails-tough Brad Pitt. Not to mention the clothes these cats wear. While Fight Club the flick is a no shirt, no shoes affair, the pugilists in this game wear the most ridiculous looking pants. Match that with the turtleneck worn by the story mode’s main character, and it’s obvious why women try to dress their boyfriends.

You Have to Fight

If you’re going to get anything right in a game called Fight Club about a fight club, based on the movie/book Fight Club, it best be the fighting. But it doesn’t happen here. The fighting is limited, stodgy, awkward, and comically bad. Sometimes you’ll get knocked back so flatly that you’ll guffaw at the lack of realism. Other times it seems like the goal is to keep these people from fighting altogether. Once someone’s on the ground, you can’t attack (unless you’ve thrown them down after a grapple), and there’s enough time to block any kick that comes your way, because it moves so slowly.

I am Jack’s Dislocated Elbow

Still, the fighting does feature two worthwhile components. The first is the ability to reconfigure someone’s bone structure. Once you’ve weakened your opponent (but annoyingly not before) you can perform a clutch-and-grab that will show the wire-frame of your opponent’s skeleton. Once that’s a go, the slow-mo shows off your hospitalizing maneuver, whether it be a crunching kick to the coccyx, or a punch that ruins the joint of someone’s outstretched arm. If the move doesn’t finish your combatant, then they’ll have to fight the rest of the way with only one arm. Very nice.
 
The other interesting aspect of the fighting is the blood splatters that splash the screen after a nose-rearranging headbutt or a devastating series of knuckle sandwiches. It’s a gross effect, but a meaningful one. The blood will splash, then drip away. Nothing says success like red blood cells!

Palahniuk Turning Over in His Bed

While the story of this game is absolute confusion and nonsense book-ended by scenes from the film, it’s ineptitude is emphasized by cutscenes that would’ve looked great on the Sega Saturn. Instead, the cutscenes are played as stills, cutting back and forth from Generic Guy #1 to Generic Guy #2. The voice work isn't much better, and every character finds it necessary to throw around F-bombs like elbows.

The Ninth Rule of Fight Club . . .

In the end, this game does little more than insult an iconic insta-classic film. If this were created when the film came out, maybe it would’ve been on par technologically with some of the day’s fighters. But it’s five years later. In that time, the game creators obviously didn’t consult Palahniuk. Maybe he would’ve sat them down, and explained the yet-released ninth rule: Don’t make a crap fighting game and call it Fight Club.