These days, if a sports game doesn't look fantastic, nobody's going to play it. In Deathrow's case, everything seems almost too polished for such a gritty activity. Each arena comes painstakingly decorated with reflective surfaces, light-riddled walls, and a distinctive flair representative of the home team. The Sea Cats battle it out in an underwater base complete with sharks swimming below a glass arena floor, while the Black Dragons' dojo boasts an authentic ninja training ground appearance to full effect. Team models are super-detailed and brilliantly sharp, especially up close. Looks like SouthEnd got creative with designing several of the characters, too -- check out the Convicts for some clever movie tributes ('Riddick' from Pitch Black, and 'Hector', a face-masked spoof of Hannibal Lector).
Sound plays a big part in Deathrow, as every team has a defining voice set and specialized trash-talk before and during every round. I'll admit, I was a bit spooked upon hearing the First Blitzers speak for the first time... and you've got to love the Sea Cats' bitchy Russian accent. And boy, do they let the expletives fly! You can expect to hear every foul-mouthed phrase under the sun when the fighting starts, so make sure there aren't any children present when you pop this bad boy in. Deathrow also supports custom soundtracks for those who don't favor the pulsing drum and bass-tinged default tunes. Unfortunately, it'll only allow 10 songs per soundtrack, and the in-game song search works randomly, so it might take a while to find that perfect fighting song. Very odd.
