If you’ve been into fighting games for a while, then you’ll probably recognize a ton of familiar faces in SVC Chaos. And with that nostalgia kick you have just about the only thing recommendable about the game.

Let’s say that you are a big fighter fan and are looking to get in touch with the genre’s roots. The first thing you see will come as a very unpleasant shock – it’s not just the fighters that are old school it is the graphics as well. The 2D grainy characters and low-color, static, and minimalist backgrounds may have been acceptable in an arcade 10 years ago or on a Sega Genesis, but do you really want to see graphics like these on your Xbox?

OK, now let’s say that you can put up with the terrible graphics. How about the fighting? Well I’m sorry to say that the game fares just as poorly in this category. The collision detection just seems to be outright skittish, leaving you to wonder if a punch will connect or not. It’s also odd that it’s hard to tell how much damage you’ve done by watching the fighters – a flurry of attacks of different kinds come from both attackers and one flops backwards. You have no idea how well each attack succeeds without constantly keeping an eye on the health bar. While you have a huge number of fighters to choose from, they’re not well-balanced and unless you’re already familiar with them all selecting the wrong fighter will turn your matches into exercises in futility.

SVC Chaos can be played in the standard arcade, two player head-to-head, practice, and survival modes. In survival mode you move from match to match with only a small amount of health restoration between each bout. Since the arcade mode becomes darn near impossible towards the end, the game will let you rematch with your foe at reduced health. For those of you who feel that your favorite character’s outfit should be a different color, there is a color editor that lets you make the change yourself. Finally, the game does come with Xbox Live support. You can jump into quick bouts or look for someone to fight in the game’s lobby. Oddly, there is no rematch option after a fight. Other than that, the online fights suffer from the same issues as the single player ones, except with occasional lag problems thrown in for fun.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 35%.  With the recent releases of some really good fighters for the Xbox, it’s hard to recommend SVC Chaos unless you are a true fan of the classic SNK or Capcom fighters.