Many game genres, such as tower defense or castle defense, have been used a lot in the App Store. There are so many of them that more or less every iDevice user will have at least one of the genres on their device. Other genres, however, are really poorly represented on the App Store. Fighting games are one of them.

Grizzly is one of the only fighting games on the App Store. It is meant to be a sort of recreation of street fighter for the iPhone/iPod Touch except with plush animals (teddy bears etc). In my opinion though, it just doesn’t get it right.

The reason I find it’s not that great is due to the fact it isn’t deep enough. In street fighter, a series of well-executed combos are needed to be a successful fighter but in Grizzly, button mashing will get you through just as well, if not more easily.

The reason I say button mashing might be the better solution is due to the horrible controls. Essentially, the controls are a virtual control pad on the left for moving and four buttons on the right for attacking. The virtual pad is completely unresponsive, which could have a lot to do with the fact it actually looks much more like one round circle than a control pad.

The four buttons for attacking also have the exact same flaw. Instead of keeping it simple and having four buttons down the side or something similar, the developers decided to merge the four buttons together into one big round circular button, which can sometimes make it hard to execute the attack you want to do. To do a light punch, tap the top right of the circle, a heavy punch requires a tap on the top left of the circle, a light kick requires you to tap the bottom left and a heavy kick requires a tap in the bottom left.

I think a better control method would be to have a virtual joystick on the left and to move and four buttons down the right to attack.

The graphics are quite good and are actually quite funny. All the characters are well rendered in 2.5D and are designed to look like they’re moving plush animals. The backgrounds are just still pictures of common places such as a road, a shopping mall and several others. They’re nothing special, but they do the job.

The sounds in this game are pretty good as well. In the title screen, the music that is playing is classical but during battles, upbeat techno music is featured. The sound effects are really nothing special, yet that’s ok. Punches and kicks all make that stereotypical ‘thwack’ noise, which makes the game a bit more satisfying.

Overall, this app isn’t great. The fact that you could easily win matches by button mashing makes the game very tedious and the controls are also a real letdown. If you have or know young children, this might just be the best fighting game on the App Store for them, but otherwise I cant really recommend this app.

3/5 (mediocre fighting game with horrid controls)

Grizzly on the App Store.