Maybe the first rule of Fight Crab was that you don’t talk about Fight Crab, because I somehow completely missed the 2019 original. Up until I got my hands on its sequel at Tokyo Game Show this week the only battles with crabs I’ve ever known were written about in multiple chapters of the Motley Crue biography. But after going pincers-on with Fight Crab 2 I now consider myself an instant fan. It seems brilliant and utterly bonkers in the best way possible.
If you’re a newcomer like me, you’ve probably got a lot of questions – particularly if you just watched the nine minutes of gameplay above. Questions like: why are there giant crabs bashing each other with everything from swords to overgrown carrots and corn cobs? Why is there an armoured knight clinging to the back of their shells? Why is that crab riding a tricycle? The truth is that I don’t really have a good answer to any of these questions, but if you’re wondering if Fight Crab 2 is fun then the answer is a confident yes.
The control system is simple, at least if you want it to be. While I’m told there’s a more advanced control setup for crab-fighting connoisseurs, I opted for the ‘Modern’ control setup during my short demo. In this setup you steer your crab around with the left stick, use the left and right triggers to attack with whatever weapon you have equipped in each claw, and hold the two shoulder buttons to block. There’s slightly more to it than that such as the ability to pinch and hold enemies or throw weapons as projectiles, but the bottom line is you need to use your considerable heft and consistent attacks to tip your opponent over and keep them on their back until they’re down for a short three-count.
This time around there’s a single-player career mode that’s more fleshed out than a freshly boiled Tasmanian King Crab. You pick your combatant from a crab select screen, customise its weapon loadout, give it a fun name like David Pincher, and thrust it into a seafood scrap.
While there are straightforward one-on-one arena fights to overcome, there appears to be a nice variety of different challenges to tackle. In one I had to defend a group of dancers on a stage from several waves of crustacean marauders, in another I had to liberate humans suspended in cages by bashing against the bars while trying to avoid other crabs out to spoil my rescue attempts. It would seem that it’s not just crabs that you’ll have to contend with, either – in one volcanic arena I battled what seemed to be one of the Stone Talus’ straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, whose considerable heft took an enormous amount of my crab-jabs to knock off its stoney haunches.
After each victory, you get to choose one of three seemingly random rewards – either weapons like chained anchors or pistols to take with you into the next battle, or permanent buffs to your stats. Oh sure, you may assume that a fighting game about battling crabs would likely be shallow, but Fight Crab 2’s career could well be as deep as the ocean. Did I mention you also get the opportunity to train your crab in between bouts by lifting weights to build up your crab-dominal muscles? Apparently all the progress and growth your chosen crab experiences in the single-player career mode will then transfer into multiplayer battles should you choose to take the fight online.
I’ve had just a tiny taste of Fight Crab 2 and I’m keen to try more. The good news is that Fight Crab 2 is set to enter Steam Early Access this North American winter, so there’s not too long until these silly shellfish shenanigans can entertain us all.
Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN AU. He doesn’t condone crab-on-crab violence outside sanctioned competitions.
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