Parent's Guide: Darkstalkers: Resurrection - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Darkstalkers Resurrection is a fighting game that pits two fantastical characters against each other in a brawl. You pick a cartoony character based on mythological horror creatures, and have to use a series of attacks (or mash buttons) in order to hit your foe and reduce their health to zero. These moves range from simple attacks like punches and kicks with single button presses, to much more complicated moves that ask you to twist the analogue stick and press a button in conjunction to launch, say, a fireball at the foe.

In terms of how children will get on though, a lot depends on what they'll be doing. While it's entirely possible to get on by just mashing buttons rather than memorising each character's moves (and the button combo required to use them), younger children will likely find themselves ending up coming against a brick wall of a particularly tough computer character. As the more complex moves dish out a lot more damage, it pays to learn each character's most powerful moves - but things here are a lot more in depth than in simpler brawlers, like Smash Bros. While there is a tutorial, which does a good job of explaining complicated fighting terms, memorising the moves takes a great deal of patience, and younger children will likely either just want to jump into the game and mash buttons, or simply won't have the motor skills to get the (rather complex) combinations right, some of which require very specific timing. The often relentless difficulty won't make a younger child's life any easier, either.

Darkstalkers Resurrection has quite a bit of content that parents may want to know about. The main issue is that some female characters wear some rather revealing outfits - one character for instance is almost bare naked save some fur over her, and some artwork also places emphasis on gigantic breasts and/or bums. One character, a succubus, even becomes fully naked with little censorship for one of her attacks. It's also quite violent in nature; characters have spurts of blood from specific attacks and one character even has a hand made of blood fly up out of the ground and smash the opponent around - although everything is done in a very cartoon way. Some characters also shout various sexual innuendos in both Arcade Mode and tutorial mode. Finally, when certain characters are blown up as a result of say missiles, their clothing is torn, making already revealing outfits even less modest!

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360