You might be wondering why I would waste my time and space to review a game that will never be "officially" released. The answer to that is easy. I want to warn anybody out there who may be thinking about paying money to get his hands on a bootleg copy of Thrill Kill about this "game."

If you’re unfamiliar with Thrill Kill here’s the story. These guys made this Playstation game that was supposed to be incredibly over-the-top violent. They released artwork to the media depicting some really sick stuff, lots of gore and blood, etc. The publisher gets cold feet, the games rights are sold to another publisher who finally puts the kibosh on the project once and for all. That’s the short version, but it’ll serve my purposes. Unfortunately, the PR people for the game did their jobs spectacularly, leading to dozens of previews, and even full-blown cover features and strategy guides for the game. So, when the announcement came that the game was killed, a lot of people got very angry and wrote angry letters to whoever would listen. A lot of people believed that Thrill Kill was terminated because of the graphic violence. I am here to set the record straight.

In a nutshell, Thrill Kill stinks.

But please, allow me to elaborate.

Graphically, the game is a mess. The character models are poorly animated, goofy looking and polygonal breakup causes them to have a disjointed appearance. The stages in which you "fight" are all very small, dark, square rooms with very little detail.

The sounds don’t fare any better. Hitting noises sound more like bursts of static. You’d expect a game whose focus is on beating people to bloody pulps to feature some loud, wet punching effects, but they’re nowhere to be found.

Surprisingly, the controls are somewhat workable. Not that walking around tiny rooms and being able to punch, kick and throw opponents is any kind of miraculous achievement in game design.

Thrill Kill has no life meters, which is a big departure from traditional fighting games. Instead, every player (up to four at a time) has a meter that builds as attacks are connected. When one combatant’s meter fills all the way up, he gets to kill one of his opponents. There’s no trick to this, either; it’s simply a matter of walking up to them and pressing a button. Instant death. After the incredibly lame fatality has played out (believe me, you’ve seen them all done before, and better, in the Mortal Kombat series) the fight continues between the remaining contestants until only one is left. There is very little technique to this, and the small arenas make it nearly impossible to avoid the one-touch kills.

To sum up—be glad that Thrill Kill was not released. There was a very good reason for it. The game is pure, unfiltered, grade A crap. It’s no fun, it looks bad, it’s stale, it’s incredibly unoriginal, and it deserved the early demise it was dealt.

If you still don’t believe me and really want to play Thrill Kill, then do the next best thing and try the Wu-Tang Clan fighting game.  It uses the discarded Thrill Kill engine. While I don’t know if that’s a good or bad omen, it can’t be worse than Thrill Kill. Which is terrible. Did I say that already?