After reading the review of Deathrow in OAXM over 2 months ago I've been pretty hyped up for this game so around its release date I was phoning my local store almost daily to see if it was in stock. As soon as it was I was down there in 20 minutes and walking back to the car anxious to get home and finally play it!

Deathrow is a 'futuristic, action, fighting sports title'. Confused? don't be as Deathrow simply melds all these separate genres into one hard hitting action packed game that is awesome fun to play. The concept sounds simple, take a metal Frisbee (the Blitz Disc) and score goals by throwing it through the opposition's goals. Aside from the frisbee bit it basically sounds like soccer, but to compare it to any existing 'sport title' is unfair as Deathrow offers so much more.

During the course of a game you can choose to either concentrate on scoring goals or totally beat the living daylights out of your opponents. You can kick, punch, slide, dive and perform combo attacks on them with the sole purpose of causing grievous bodily harm. Its awesome fun and provides plenty of depth to the game.

The controls in Deathrow are straight forward and very easy to get the hang of. There's also a tutorial mode that the game prefers you to complete before beginning the single match or conquest modes of play.

You use the left stick to move around, the right stick to strafe, R trigger to focus on the location of the disc, Y to jump, B to kick/shoot, A to punch/pass, X does a block/evasion move and the L trigger combined with A or B does a slide tackle or dynamic grab. Pressing A+B together does a grab/combo move with the results differing depending on which team you use. If you're using the Black Dragons you can perform awesome looking punches that throw your opponent back 10 feet or if you manage to unlock the First Blitzer team first you use one punch to hurl your opponent into the air and then another to send them flying back across the arena. When you pull off these awesome looking moves you're treated to a nice slow motion 'matrix style' 360 degree camera sweep around you as you pull it off. It looks awesome and gives the game a chance to show off its great player models and graphics.

As you get more confident you can perform 'One-Timer' moves which earn you more credits and also Fake moves and the Deathrow move. To perform the Deathrow move, hold down the shoot button till the disc glows green, once released it explodes upon impact but be careful as it can stun your own team mates as well. Its hand for sprinting up to goal, charging the disc up and letting it rip to stun the defender. If you're quick you can grab the disc again and shoot into an open goal. It's an effective tactic and one that you'll see the A.I use pretty regularly against you.

The players handle very well and the controls are very responsive. In no time you'll be pulling off cool looking combos and wreaking total havoc and destruction across the 32 Blitz arenas.

Scattered around the arenas are power up spots. Every now and again power ups will appear to give you an added boost. These range from momentum, health, speed boosts, attack boosts and extra credits so keep an eye out for them!

Game modes include a good Tutorial mode during which the CPU instructs you in what buttons to push. There's a Single Match mode in which you can play against any of your unlocked teams in any unlocked arenas but the real meat of Deathrow is the Conquest mode. You start off in the lower divisions and attempt to make your way to the top. Along the way you can buy new players for your team, train them, heal them, test experimental drugs on them and also perform missions in between league matches. Winning in Single Match or Conquest mode awards you unlock credits which you can use to unlock hidden game features like Multidisc, Extreme difficulty or extra players, arenas and teams. There's so much to unlock in Deathrow that if you're motivated, will most likely take months to unlock it all.

The graphics in Deathrow are awesome. The player models are made up of 7000+ polygons each and are extremely detailed. If you're looking for a game to show off your Xbox to your mates then Deathrow won't let you down. The disc itself leaves an awesome looking trail and glows red or blue depending on who has hold of it. The arenas look great and vary in shape and size with many different locations. The Demon arena has a bridge over a lava flow, the Disciples arena looks like the inside of a church and the Black Dragons arena is like a Dojo! The all look awesome and feature excellent lighting and bump mapping as well. There are awesome reflections on many arena surfaces and also the players.

I'm happy to report that there are NO framerate slowdowns at all. Everything moves at a rock solid framerate and when there are two opposition Demon players hurtling down on you with the sole intention of kicking your butt, you'll be very glad about this! Everything looks great, very detailed and moves along at a blistering pace. The PS2 would not stand a chance trying to push this game around!

At the end of each quarter you can also watch a nice tv style replay of all the carnage of you've caused, or the ass whupping that you received.

Well heres the one area of Deathrow that actually may limit the amount of time you can spend on it. If you have kids or live at home with your parents then you may want to keep the volume down as Deathrow contains very liberal usage of many profanities. You can taunt with the White button and during the course of a game you will hear heaps of swearing, some examples are:

'we're going to kick your asses mother f**kers'

'we f**king suck' if you are losing

'we f**king rule' if you are winning

'we're going to destroy you you buttf**kers'

That's just a sample, with heavy use of the F word, references to sodomy and plenty of other extreme insults, Deathrow is one game that may offend some people. Personally it didn't bother me at all and fits the theme of the game very well. Other in game audio is handled very well; the crunches sound awesome and differ depending on the team you are playing. The robot teams make metallic sounds and the human teams make bone crunching sounds as you pummel them. The profanities and insults also vary depending on the team you choose which is a great touch. Make sure you listen out for them during the games so crank the volume right up! One great audio feature is a 'muffled, echo' effect when you get cleaned up or perform a combo move on an opponent, it just sounds awesome and is another example of the attention paid to Deathrow by the developers.

The game music is ok, but the developers were kind enough to also add the ability to play custom soundtracks so if you don't like the normal game music, rip your favourite cds to the Xbox hard drive and play them back while you play the game!

Deathrow supports up to 4 players in split screen mode. You can have a team solely made up of your friends if you like and hand out some real beatings to the CPU, or better yet, split the teams up evenly and get ready for some real carnage. Deathrow also supports system link!! And you can network up 8 Xboxes for some multiplayer action the way it was intended. I cant wait to try out some 4-8 player system link Deathrow action and its great to see a developer that will include the features that make Xbox the best console out.