Frasier Crane once said: “Life is a banquet”, and that’s exactly how I feel about the PlayStation catalogue of games, a massive assortment of delicious meals at your fingertips, ready to be gobbled down so enthusiastically that you forget to close your mouth while chewing. Unfortunately, though, there are some dishes on the table that may not be to everyone’s taste. For example, I’m not much of a Fighting Game fan but lately, I feel like I pick up a controller to smash someone’s face in and all I land up doing is a badly timed dodge-roll into my opponent’s super-charged uppercut. What happened to the good old days of fluid combat where it didn’t feel like I had to hit the exact combination of square, square, triangle, left, up, down, brief millisecond pause, up, up again?? square+circle, square, just to get my character to throw a left hook? I’m not saying fighting games are kak, but what I am saying is I’m kak at them and so I tend to avoid them.
Fast forward to writing this column and getting the community to vote for the next game to play and what do we land up with right off the bat? You guessed it, a fighting game. To say I was disappointed when I searched for it on the PlayStation Deluxe catalogue is a bit of an understatement, but as true slaves to our fans, I tapped X on download.
So, what did we land up getting, from that oh-so-terrible genre? Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid.
Lucky enough, I just so happened to have some of the boys over for the night and I convinced them that we were going to be Power Ranging the night away, and, surprisingly enough, I had a Mighty Morphin’ blast!
With everyone rounded up on the couch, we booted it up and went straight into versus mode, what else? Then we were presented with a selection of Rangers from a variety of the different Power Rangers series. We hit random all the way through and prepared to MegaZord the shoes off each other.
Unless you somehow got to this point of the article without reading the beginning, you’ll remember that I’m not much of a fighting game kind of guy, so, as soon as the match started, I went into my fighting stance: roll my entire face over every button at the same time, and pray. Considering this isn’t how most modern fighting games play out these days, I wasn’t very hopeful, but whaddya know, it worked!
One mate down, and a little more excited that this might be a fighting game reminiscent of the old days, I straightened my back and attempted to figure out the buttons this time. Another mate down, I was getting the hang of this. Boom! Another mate finished off like he was salmon in a Norwegian restaurant.
Then, finally, the last mate stood before me, actually, he sat next to me but go with me here, claiming he hasn’t played on a console since before ‘Mighty Morphin‘ was even coined. My inner self scoffed. What followed were the sweatiest 5 minutes of the evening, face roller versus face roller, he fought me down to the very last sliver of health before I snuck in one last combo to claim the match. VICTORY! Every one of my so-called friends face down in the dirt where they belong! (Jokes, please still be my friend friends) I hung up my controller, at the peak of my career, all smug and proud like an un-hungry lion.
Sitting in my undefeated throne, watching the guys play until the early hours of the morning, slowly figuring out the combos and getting better and better, I couldn’t help but smile.
No, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid isn’t the best fighting game I’ve ever seen. No, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid isn’t going to get me to become a fighting game addict, but what Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid did do, was make me enjoy myself, not only while playing it, but while hanging out and having a good time with friends. And if that’s not what a game is supposed to do, then maybe I need to get myself a new dictionary.
Overall, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is probably not something I would’ve spent my hard-earned green on, but I’m pretty happy that I was able to pick it out from the PlayStation Plus Extra Tier games catalogue and have an awesome night of gaming with my mates. It gets a Deluxe Thumbs Up from me.
Feel like picking out the next game I take for a spin? Comment below and we’ll add it to the Deluxe Wheel of Delux-iousness for next week’s paper-sode. Better yet, come and hang out in our Discord where voting on the Deluxe column comes with sides! (Disco Disco)
See you all in a week (or sooner) Ex Oh Ex Oh