Having played the demo of the Dreamcast version of Fur Fighters last year (and being disappointed by it), I largely knew what to expect from the PS2 version. Fur Fighters: Viggo’s Revenge has been touted as a much-improved upgrade of the original. Thus, I went into this game with a mixture of dread and curiosity. While the PS2 version is (surprisingly) much better than the Dreamcast original, it’s still not without it’s flaws.

The storyline is a simple one. General Viggo is looking to take over the world. Unfortunately for him, standing in his way are the Fur Fighters…six different animals with big guns. In order to keep the Fur Fighters out of his business; he kidnaps their babies in hopes of scaring them into submission. The Fur Fighters are a fighting lot though, and thus they set out to rescue your babies and stop General Viggo’s plans for world domination.

At its core, gameplay consists of a lot of runnin’ and gunnin’. The game uses the dual analog setup most FPS fans have gotten used to (one to look, one to run), as well as having L2 and R2 assigned to strafing. You’ll use each of the six different Fur Fighters to blast your way through 30 different levels (divided into six different worlds), killing baddies and rescuing your babies along the way. Complicating things is the fact that each baby will only go with an adult of the corresponding type. Thus, to save a canine baby you’ll need to be controlling Roofus (the leader of the group) at the time. Further complicating things is the fact that each Fur Fighter has a unique capability, and thus will need to be utilized for certain situations. Roofus can burrow through soft soil, Chang (a firefox) is small and can squeeze into tiny places, Juliette (a sassy pussycat) can climb with her claws, Rico (a penguin) is the only one of the group that can dive underwater, Bungalow (a kangaroo) can naturally jump higher than the rest, and finally Tweek (a dragon) can glide through the air. The game also features a multiplayer mode, but it seems tacked onto the game and not really that well thought out. With the aiming problems outlined in the next paragraph, multiplayer doesn’t really involve a lot of skill or strategy.

For the most part, the controls are pretty tight. The default controller setup should be familiar to most PS2 users, and while it’s a bit complicated (as it uses most every button except L3 and R3) most gamers shouldn’t have trouble adapting to it. Really the only problem with the control setup is found in aiming. Like most games of this nature, for some reason they made the aiming way too sensitive. To help compensate for this, there is a huge auto-aim that will lock onto oncoming enemies halfway across the screen. In the end this actually hurts things though (you’d get used to the sensitive aiming), as it eliminates the necessity for virtually any skill in killing your enemies.