S&S; Indie Review: S. Avatar Fighting Tournament

Title: Super Avatar Fighting Tournament: Indie Addition // Format: XBLIG // Release Date: 07-05-12 // Publisher & Developer: Buhd // Price: 80 Microsoft Points // Violence: 2/3 // Sex: 0/3 // Mature Content: 0/3
Well, it certainly doesn't throw you in the thick of the action quite like Wii Sports, nor does it hang tough with the fighting game heavyweights such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. But there's no denying that S.Avatar Fighting Tournament does well in effortlessly assimilating your avatar right into the game's engine. You may not be punching and kicking along with your guy (or gal) via the Kinect's motion sensor, but you may as well say it's you versus your friends...or avatars randomly generated by the computer.
There are no surprises here. S.A.F.T. consists of very basic fighting mechanics. You have three fighting styles...boxing, karate, and Tai Kwon Do...and four points to divide among the three categories. Based on the number of points you add to each style, you get a certain number of special combos and techniques that will help you out in battle. Therefore, you only have twelve different signature moves to choose from, and one...the fireball...acts as your only projectile (and turns the karate style into the broken fighting form since karate awards you the fireball if you give that style three points). Outside signature techniques, you have your basic high kick, low kick, high punch, and low punch commands. Tilt the Left Analog stick away from your opponent and you block. Although guarding works extremely well in this small fighter, you will still receive a small portion of damage if the enemy's flurry of strikes makes contact.
Although the fighting itself is handled rather well, and very much makes this the 360 Avatar's Street Fighter, there's not much variety to be found. Every character has access to the same amount of moves, so you pretty much can figure out your opponent's pattern and adjust your avatar so that you're evenly matched. The difference in difficulty between the easy and medium settings is noticeable. CPU fighters in Easy block and advance far less, but since opponents in Hard lash out at you with a maelstrom of aggressive combos, they actually leave themselves more vulnerable to attack than in Medium, where the CPU focuses on a combination of defensive tactics and disarming maneuvers.
If you're playing in Single Player, then you have a choice between three modes: Training, Single Match, and Tournament. Training mode is self-explanatory and allows you to adjust the belligerence of the CPU (in the case that you don't just turn them into punching bags). The single match's difficulty can be set, and you can also customize the number of rounds that you wish for the match to last. Tournament mode does not have a difficulty setting (although it plays as if it's on Medium), and is really only three matches long, unless you decide to watch the CPU rounds (which are nothing extraordinary unless you wish to see the randomly designed avatars that have been thrown into the fray).
In short, this may be a fun little 5-minute break amongst friends, but otherwise, S.Avatar is as basic a fighting game that you can possibly get on XBox Live. If there's anything I wish to see, it's that the developers come back with the same formula, but with stirring new combos and fighter classes, and perhaps some playable characters if you do so happen to get bored playing as your ideal self.
S&S Rating: 6.8