Everyone has heard the phrase, 'Don't judge a book by its cover'. At some point, though, you see so many terrible books of the same genre you cannot help but shudder when you see the next one. Such is the case with Activision's take on Dreamworks' latest computer-animated effort, Kung Fu Panda. While it is hard not to immediately lump it with the long string of marketing-fuelled garbage, the game turns out to be a great reminder why all of us should give something a fresh chance before casting it to the wolves.
The game follows the same basic story as the movie, but never makes the mistake of assuming that you have seen the film. You play the role of Po, a panda convinced that he is a great Kung-Fu fighter. Things get interesting when an old sage grants Po the title of 'Dragon Warrior', seemingly in error, at a Kung-Fu tournament featuring the five best fighters in the land. Po then has to convince the five fighters, their leader, and himself, that he is deserving of the title. It is a well-told story, with a great sense of humor thanks to the inclusion of Jack Black on vocal duties as Po. While the rest of the film's main cast is missing, if there was no film to compare it to you would have no complaints, as the voice work is solid throughout.
The gameplay is your basic 3D adventure, full of coin and item collection to break up the enemy bashing. Gamers can use the coins they collect towards post-level (or pause-screen, for impatient folks) upgrades to Po's skills and abilities, adding a little RPG flair to the game's basic adventure feel. The game offers so much in the way of upgrades that most gamers will need to play through the game a second time to attain enough coins to unlock everything. Thanks to an easy-to-use control scheme, entertaining gameplay, and the game's sparkling personality you will want to play through more than once.
The controls for the game are simple, with X handling fast attacks and Y handling your power moves. The game expands on these basic controls by teaching you combos to use in battle. The combos are all a lot of fun to use, including the various blocking counterattacks. Po's belly flop at the ground after a jump is both entertaining and effective at sending swarms of smaller enemies to the ground. Since it is not a very expansive set of combos, children who pick up the game will be able to handle it with ease. Gamers old enough to purchase this with their own hard-earned cash will find enough here to keep them involved until the end, since you there is a fair amount of character changing (each with their own combos) and steady progression that keeps Po learning new moves until the end.
Levels design is about the same throughout, with a handful of small baddies charging at you in addition to the one or two medium-sized enemies to fight. You go about your business as Po, or one of the other master fighters, thwarting boars, crocks, and gorillas, while saving rabbits and turtles. It all fits in well with the story, and never feels too cute for an adult to be blasting through it. Thanks to the aforementioned fighting system and fantastic animation, it never gets old either.
While most animated film to game transitions suffer badly from being unable to match the beauty of what you see on the big screen, Kung Fu Panda is gorgeous. No, it is quite on par with the quality of the film, but it is incredibly close. The character models, the battle animations, and the scenery all look fantastic, despite a too-soft color palette. With the story told over thirteen levels, it will take most gamers between six to eight hours to complete on the hardest difficulty, and will leave you wanting more.
There are only a couple of minor complaints with the campaign. The camera, while tracking you fine through most of the game, does tend to get in your way on a few occasions. A few levels seem designed with loving memories of Frogger in mind, with floating lily pads and pallets to jump on. In these cases, the camera automatically shows you the final destination; leaving you to fiddle with the right-stick to find oncoming objects to jump on. Far more frustrating, the camera seems unable to keep up with intense boss battles. Too often you will jump to apparent safety, only to get pummeled by the boss at hand. It leaves you swinging the camera almost as frequently as Po's fists. The boss battles also feature the other slight issue with the game. The game zips along dreamily for the first one and three-quarters levels, until you reach your first boss battle and arrive at a quick-time event. Thankfully, there is more to the battles than these annoying clips, but every boss battle has at least one quick-time event before you can win. Thankfully, developers keep them at relative minimum in the game, and the boss battles are typically challenging enough to welcome the break when they show up; well, almost.
As if the great single-player game were not enough to warrant your attention, the disc also has a boatload of goodies under the multiplayer mode. While playing through the single player game, you come across green-glowing 'Rare' coins that unlock various aspects of the multiplayer side of things, from levels to playable characters. The depth of events offered in multiplayer is impressive. There are 'brawl' levels that take a decent stab at the Smash Bros. melee-style battle, a match-three game, archery-style target practice using some of the games large mountable weapons, and even a version of mahjongg, to name a few.
Perhaps the best of the bunch is the team survival mode, where players share a set number of lives in an attempt to last fifteen minutes of non-stop baddies in a single room. The only small complaint with this side of the game is that it is limited to same-console gaming, for up to four players. It is deep and varied enough to warrant a full XBLA release for at least 800 MS Points, and would be an absolute hit over Live.
What separates Kung Fu Panda from the bunk you are used to getting alongside a film's release is that it actually feels as though the game would stand up well on its own without the film. It is obvious that we should expect this from any such movie-related game, but we see it so infrequently that we get excited when it happens. Still, Activision absolutely nailed it with Kung Fu Panda, delivering a great game first and a film tie-in second.
