Ready for some brawling? Superfighters from MythoLogic Interactive is a single-screen 2-player versus or single-player fighting game replete with weapons, tactical maneuvers, and chunky pixel art your eyes will adore. It's a game where little dudes shoot, stab, burn, kick, shoot (again) and trick each other until they pass out from non-livingness, and once that round is over, you get to do it all over again!

Superfighters has a bit of an obtuse control scheme that takes some time to get used to. Controls are fully customizable, though, which helps enormously, especially if you have a gamepad handy. Basically, you move with the [arrow] keys and use [N] and [M] for melee and ranged weapons respectively. If a second player is joining you, they'll get their own set of keys on the other side of the keyboard. You have a few special moves available to help add a layer of tactics to the game, namely dash, dive and roll maneuvers as well as a handy "take cover" ability. The game introduces you to everything slowly, but it'll take a few rounds before it all settles in. It's worth the time, though!

Once you're ready to rock, Superfighters offers two main modes of play: vs mode and stage mode. The former is a simple battle to the end where you choose characters, the number of players, which team each player/bot is on, and the stage you'll fight in. Stage mode is similar but gives you a quest of sorts to defeat the opposing team across the game's four stages in three levels of difficulty. Set everything up, hit the [spacebar], and you're ready to brawl!

Combat in Superfighters is frantic, strategic, and enormously satisfying. You start with a few basic weapons, a weak melee attack and a few grenades, but since everybody's got those, you need an edge. Check for the location of your opponents, then look for the nearest weapon you can find. Rush to it and be aware that everyone else is coming after you, so both defense and offense should be played equally. Grab something that goes boom and start hunting!

Analysis: Despite its lengthy learning curve for a casual Flash game, Superfighters manages to provide a great brawling experience that's right at home in your browser. It's simple in nature (other than the controls, of course) but opens itself to a lot of possibilities, making each battle wildly different than the previous.

There's no online multiplayer at the moment, which is unfortunate, as this game would be phenomenal with real life players on the other side of those pixel characters, But the AI is reasonably smart, doesn't "cheat" too often, and provides you with a good level of challenge throughout the game. Besides, if one computer-controlled opponent isn't tough enough, try adding seven more, see how easy it is then!

The variety of weapons and stages in Superfighters isn't that great, but you're really not focused on the pick-ups and scenery as you are where the other players are and how you can shoot them without them shooting you. This is a great example of a game with mechanics that outshine its own structure, allowing gameplay to take top shelf while everything else plays a supporting role.

Don't let the initial complexity fool you. Superfighters is a smart and savvy brawling game with a lot of possibility. With more fighters, stages, weapons, and a few tweaks to the camera to make it easier to see the players, it stands to be one of the best fighting games you can play in your browser!

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Cheers to repairmanman for sending this one in!