Breaking the first rule
I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but Decipher has a new CCG out, and it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s called "Fight Klub," just like that, with a K and everything, and apparently the first rule is that you blab like shit about it to everybody you know, which might run a bit counter to your expectations.
See, what I’ve been able to gather is that this is part CCG and part multi-level marketing organisation; in a nutshell, it’s Amway: The Gathering. One thing I can definitely say for Decipher, though, is that they’re doing their damndest to tap into an extremely stupid zeitgeist. See, all the kids today are way into pretending to hate big business, and Decipher’s trying to work into that by pretending that its new CCG is "player-driven." Which means they have this weird gimmick about how you can’t play it unless you get an invitation from somebody else who’s already a member, and you can’t just go to the store and buy cards like this is some sort of horrible corporation. Instead, you order them, err, from Decipher. TO STICK IT TO THE MAN!
The game itself looks really fucking dumb, to be honest. It’s following the pattern of Ani-Mayhem by attempting to exploit as many pop culture licences as possible, only it lacks the anime theme that gave that game some type of cohesion. Though I’ll admit that if you’ve spent your life waiting for a game where you could play Ash from the Evil Dead movies, Rambo, and Chuck Norris against your opponent’s deck of Hannibal Lecter, Mr. Blonde, and the alien from Species, well, your prayers have just been answered. So in other words, you get your set of disparate licenced movie characters, and your opponent gets his own, and then you hit each other in the head until somebody’s dead. And all the while you’re dealing with pointless drug references; you don’t buy booster packs, for example — you buy "kilos." I’m thinking that’ll appeal to the same kids who are drawn in by the faux-counter-culture marketing.
All in all, it looks like a pretty lame game supporting an extensive marketing engine. I am given to wonder only one thing: with all the licences they’ve acquired for this game, why didn’t they go the extra mile and get the Fight Club licence so they could get that idiotic K out of the name? Well, anyhow, if you’re keen to check it out, the terrible web site is over here somewhere. If you want to get in to the members-only area, you can tell them Darien sent you. They phear me at the Klub.
