It's an old film, Fight Club, but one that remains a real favourite. Fantastic cast, mind-bending twists and an outstanding script makes the film a real classic. [I'll second that! Ed]. So deep and so refreshing - which is more than can be said for the game. It's taken them long enough to come up with the idea that the film should be turned into a game; sadly, the game bears almost no resemblance to classic film, one of the only similarities being that it shares the same name.

There are a few ground rules to Fight Club. Firstly, do not talk about Fight Club. Secondly - with more emphasis on the 'do not' - do not talk about Fight Club. The rest don't stick in the mind as well as the first two, but I'm sure we can invent some new rules to tie into the game. The first rule of Fight Club the game is do not bother playing Fight Club the game. Hopefully you'll remember that one - it's key.

See, I've broken all three rules above. I am talking about Fight Club and I have been playing Fight Club. When you first power up Fight Club you may see some glimmer of hope. The menu system is well presented, with a fantastic scene behind, which changes as you change menus. But these promises soon slip away like Fight Club's luxurious bar of soap when you select any one of the many modes on offer and they slip down the plughole and into the sewer, where this stinker truly belongs!

The first thing that lets this game down is the story mode. At first glance, the story mode, like the menu system, looks rather promising. That is until the story is portrayed in almost still images. You see comic book style images, with poor vocals behind, telling the story. But describing the story as a comic gives it credit it really doesn't deserve, because the story is drawn in such a way that you can only frown upon it. But once you've gotten your head around the poor method of storytelling, the actual story lets you down. If you are expecting half of what the film delivered then you're going to be disappointed indefinitely. But why, you ask? Well to start off with, you're searching for Fight Club's front man - Tyler Durden. The search for Tyler sees you talking to many people - and every time you meet somebody they talk to you for a while, with still images and then they put you up to a fight. "Let's get to know each other better." Okay, shall we talk? No, it's a fight. "These guys won't trust you till you fight." Not again?! "Fight me, before you buy me a drink" Nooo! "New guys have to fight, that's rule number 8." Yeah, I think I better be going now…

Obviously, this game is about fighting; it's in the name for crying out loud! But some of the ways the story addresses the fights are beyond a joke. They probably couldn't have entered the battles any differently, but it still doesn't alter the fact that the story is poor. Poorer still has to be the fighting engine.

Now, keeping in tradition with the promising glimmer that appears before the infamous letdown, the fighting engine shows some cracking graphics before you start to fight. The sweaty men all look fresh, detailed and some true to the film. I especially like Bob, the man with bigger breasts than Jordan, who blames it on his testicular cancer, saying that the "drugs did this to me" - how I laughed at his poor attempt at fighting. But we will cover the graphical aspect later. The fighting engine is appalling, so what you see is a rather polished looking environment, with decent character textures, all let down by the poor engine.

But why is it poor, I hear you cry? Well, in fighting games I have experienced over the years, most have a nice combination of punches, kicks, grabs and special 'all singing, all dancing, all lights flashing' moves that are lovely to pull off. Fight Club on the other hand has a basic punch, a basic kick, a more powerful punch and a more powerful kick. As you'd imagine, this doesn't allow for much scope really - punch, punch, kick will probably become your favourite after experiencing the other failing combinations. I will say that there is an odd special move, but these moves are too hard to pull off for the amount of damage they actually cause. You pull off a nice looking head butt, which took you all your time to get right, only to find that you could have taken the same amount off with a much quicker punch. The same goes for all the other limited amount of moves in the game - they look nice, but they don't feel nice. And to think, people joined Fight Club for the refreshing fights, not for the repetitive moves, displayed all too frequently in this game.

There's actually three fighting stances for you to choose from, again, promising so much. But you won't be surprised when I tell you that it doesn't deliver. Martial Arts stance, Grappling stance and the Brawler stance. Now, like me, you're probably thinking that the martial arts stance seems interesting - but let me tell you, these stances do not really differ from each other at all. Apart from the fact that martial arts is much quicker than the brawler, the brawler is much stronger than the martial arts, and the grappling uses more technique then the pair of them, there's not much difference when you look at the moves.

With such a poor fighting engine, you're going to get bored very quickly; tapping on one button isn't going to please most fighting fans.. If you like simple-minded gameplay then you might enjoy some of the modes on offer here - first off there's a rather promising create a character mode. Did I just say promising? Do Fight Club the game promises ever deliver? You should know the answer by now - of course they don't! You are able to customise your 'member' by selecting one of the stances and then by selecting various body types (three in total), shirt colours, pant colours, skin colours and tattoos. I've seen better character customisation on my sister's Barbie doll set, where you can at least change their hairstyles and such.

Your newly created 'member' can then fight, fight and fight some more. No doubt you will undergo some type of injury while giving the opponent your all, so you will have to visit the hospital! While this is a funny novelty, it gets quite old rather quickly, having to go down to the A & E every time Bob crushes you with his breasts!

What other modes are on offer here then? Well aside from the Story mode, there's an Arcade mode for even more mindless button bashing, a Survival mode, which is my favourite aspect of any fighting game, except this one, a Training mode where you can train and a Network mode where you can fight online. I don't think you'll find many people online though - especially if they stuck to the first rule about Fight Club the game.

Graphically the game is rather good in places. The fighting arenas are quite impressive, with 360-degree backgrounds viewable from every angle as you rotate around. The character models also look very smooth and definitely stand out as one of Fight Club's stronger points. I like some of the special move-blood effects, and when you perform moves such as head butts they look so realistic that you can almost feel the pain yourself. It's just a shame that the head butts only take as much off as a small punch. Occasionally you end up breaking your opponent's bones and when you do, you see the other character in an x-ray fashion, actually witnessing their bones break as you perform your move. This is a nice effect indeed but more of a rarity; you don't go around breaking bones half as often as I'd like. But with that glimmer of hope and promise, there's a letdown that points straight to the story mode. There's hardly any FMV cut scenes at all - and all you see is a couple of pictures to tell the next part of the story. This really does take points away from the graphics, because they could have done easily created cut scenes with the in-game graphics and it still would have looked nice. As it is now, the still images don't do the graphics any justice at all.

And to flatter these crummy pictures, we also get some poor voiceovers to boot. Firstly, if you've ever seen the film then you'll feel let down by the voices in game, as they sound nothing like the film characters. Some character's voices sound better than others, but the worst cases have gone terribly wrong, where they have used a deep voice for somebody who's meant to have a softer one. It doesn't add much familiarity to a game that is supposedly named after the film. Continuing with the voices, all I seem to be able to hear is F word this and F word that. Now, I'm not the kind of person who gets offended by swear words, but constantly swearing in unnecessary places makes no sense at all. I like swearing when they use the words in the right places, such as the GTA games, or the Sopranos, but in this game it seems like a clean script has been written and then somebody has gone along with a marker pen and written in a load of obscenities that don't seem to fit. [Kind of like reverse editing then! Ed].

To let the sound down even further, the in-game music isn't very good at all. Sometimes the music is too faint during battle, when you want to hear the music the most and other times it doesn't seem to fit in with the game when the track changes and you can actually hear it. And with a message on the front cover saying that the music is by famous bands, you'd expect some decent tracks - it should at this point come as no surprise that I was disappointed. The only good part in the sound section has to be the bone-crunching sound effects and the sounds that are made when punches and kicks make a connection - they're very realistic but not enough to save the rest of the game's dire sound department.

In the end, Fight Club should not be played by anyone. Even die-hard Fight Club fans who give it a little try, just to play as their favourite characters from the film will be woefully disappointed at the wasted use of the license. Fight Club doesn't have much going for it, except lots of disappointment - the in-game graphics are nice, but then again, not as nice as better fighting games like Mortal Kombat: Deception, which actually have gameplay too. You've probably already guessed the second rule of Fight Club the game, so say it with me - the second rule of Fight Club the game is DO NOT bother playing Fight Club the game!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).