Claw-some Action

I have played some weird games in my lifetime. Thanks to the indie scene, I’ve played some weird, weird games this year. But I have to say that Fight Crab tops my list so far as my favorite. Where my 2nd favorite weird game to release this year – Freedom Finger – had a ton of style with a great soundtrack and interesting satirical premise, Fight Crab skips all that and just drops a couple crustaceans in your lap for you and your friends to watch fight it out. Ever have a crab dropped in your lap? It’s horrifying but exciting all at the same time! Especially if you have external plumbing that can get pinched and make you sing as high as Steven Tyler.

Fight Crab is a physics-based arena style fighting game where you square off against one or more crabs, lobsters and what have you. If you’ve played Octodad, Surgeon Simulator, or even Safety First, then you’ll become immediately familiar with the ridiculously unfamiliar and difficult controls. The analog sticks control the arms and pinchers, you use the triggers to punch, bumpers grab or disarm, and you use the directional pad to move them around in a set direction. The easiest way to explain it is to think of your crab as a tank, where one set of controls moves it, and the others handle the arms.

The game doesn’t really have a story. I don’t even know how you could write one if you wanted to but if you really like heroin or shrooms, have a go at it and send me a draft. Can’t be worse than anything Hollywood’s put out in the last couple years. You have 2 modes – the single player campaign, and versus mode. In the campaign, you go through the tutorials, which I highly suggest because you won’t know what the hell you’re doing otherwise. After those are through you’ll visit different themed arenas with several sub-stages in it, with a large boss at the end. If you end up having some problems with a particular fight, you can ask the computer to give you a partner to help out. They’re crabs so they won’t judge you. Much.

These arenas vary from cities, fish markets, the ocean, even a chinese restaurant, which is easily my favorite. You can destroy parts of the scenery and even pick up objects and use them, like wielding cars or palm trees or even fish. It makes no sense and is absolutely hilarious. The levels are actually a decent size as well, so you’ve got room to move around if you want to try and plan an attack or retreat if you start taking too much damage.

Speaking of, the game takes some inspiration from Smash Bros and instead of doing a health bar, there’s a percentage that shows up on the crabs. The higher the percentage, the easier it is to knock the crab on its back, and a quick count to 3 means a loss. Repeatedly punching will flip the crab back over, but like any boxing or wrestling game, that only works for so long.

Between fights, you can level up the crab of your choice or buy some weapons, each with their own stats. The leveling system is pretty neat and lets you pick the stat you want to raise, just like a Souls game. Some stats make your crab heavier and harder to knock other, some make swings with weapons use less stamina, things like that. The weapons range from knives to swords, lightsabers, I even used a seal as a weapon. Watching a couple crabs duke it out with stuff like this is so much fun to watch.

These arenas vary from cities, fish markets, the ocean, even a chinese restaurant, which is easily my favorite. You can destroy parts of the scenery and even pick up objects and use them, like wielding cars or palm trees or even fish.

The soundtrack has a blend of what I’m going to refer to as J-Pop even if that may be wrong, also some electronic music that gives the game some energy. The graphics are decent but nothing to write home about, but then you’re not playing this for the graphics, are you? I mean you shouldn’t be. The crabs themselves have plenty of detail and the environments are colorful and there’s a ton going on without it being distracting. So really with that in mind, the important stuff is what looks good.

The game really shines in Versus mode, though. You can play a local game, over wifi, or go online. As you can expect with a weird game like this, I didn’t find more than 1 game and that was when I expanded the match search as much as I could. And that guy kicked my rear all over the place, but there was no lag and I had fun. Otherwise with any match, you and your friend are going to pick your crabs, your weapons, and then go at it.

As far as any issues in the game – you’re going to hate the controls or you won’t mind them. They’re not as difficult as something like Surgeon Simulator and it’s more button-mash friendly, but if you’re trying to actually learn to play the game well, I think it’s going to be frustrating for some people. It’s best to go into this as just something funny to enjoy with your friends. And with that in mind, the price does feel a little steep for what’s being offered. $20 on day one felt a little pricey for a game like this, especially since unless you have friends who will play with you online or in person, I can’t imagine finding matches will be very easy, which leaves you with the campaign mode, which isn’t bad but it reallys serves more to unlock weapons and crabs.

At the end of the day Fight Crab is still a really fun time and you’ll have a lot of laughs playing this with friends. The sheer insanity of playing as crabs weilding weapons and smacking each other in all sorts of funny settings makes it a pretty easy recommendation, though the novelty of playing it by yourself will probably get a little boring after awhile. I’m very confident though that the moment you get someone in a room with you and your Switch one of the first things you say will be “you have to play this crazy game I bought”, and for me, that’s a sign of a good game.