Gamertell

Title: Kung Fu Panda
Price: $29.99
System(s): DS (Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Activision (Vicarious Visions)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone 10+” for cartoon violence
Pros: Utilizes the touchscreen extremely well and maintains a fair amount of humor. Nice looking environments and smooth panda moves.
Cons: Moments of boring backtracking, overly difficult bosses (for the target audience), redundant opponents and claustrophobic rooms.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one down; 79/100; C+; * * 1/2 out of five.

Although Chinese kung fu is not necessarily related to the idea of yin and yang, both play a huge part in Kung Fu Panda for the DS.

On the sunny yang side, when the game is good, it’s surprisingly good, taking excellent advantage of the DS’s touchscreen. On the darker yin side, when the game is bad, it’s really bad and becomes unplayable especially for the young, teen audience the game is aiming for.

The Way of the Paw

The game loosely follows the film, featuring Po the Panda as a martial arts student learning carious techniques from his master, Shifu. As Po learns each skill - symbolized by shiny scrolls - he is then able to perform a new move, momentarily morphing him into one of the legendary masters: Monkey, Tigress, Viper, Mantis and Crane.

The single-player game feature 13 levels, and is essentially an action platformer. The map consists of several rooms with a marked path to adjoining rooms, some of which can only be reached with a specific move, while most are simple walk-through doorways. There are some min puzzles that often require moving an urn to a switch or simply defeating every pesky opponent in an area to unlock a door or slide a trap door open.

At the end of each major level is a boss battle which is significantly more difficult than the average, redundant regenerating opponents, due to the high number of hits required to win.

The game can be completely played using the touchscreen by dragging the stylus to move, jump and perform each move. Special moves are usually simple variations of basic movies with a slightly longer pause at the end of a stroke for an additional power boost.

Touching Is Good. Repetition, Not So Much

The game starts super weak, with a simple run-to-the-other-end-of-the-map quest. Once you get to the end of that crap, the touchscreen control scheme kicks in for first usable kung fu moves and the game’s fun quickly starts to shine through.

You can use the buttons, but the game s actually much easy (and fun) with the stylus and special attacks momentarily pause the action, so your baddies aren’t getting in any cheap shots while you power up. You even get a little extra height using an angled upward attacks than when using the jump button, which is necessary in some areas.

Metroid fans will appreciate Po’s ball o’ panda morphing ability which offers an extra level of silliness, fun and paths to some levels. Progressing through levels is surprisingly enjoyable due to the progressive addition of moves, even if the highly duplicated opponents are annoyingly repetitive. Even Po’s transitions into special movie characters is smooth, with the slightest pause that lets you know what you are (Monkey, Tigress, etc.) without cutting into the game’s pace.

It’s not until your yang changes to yin and you encounter either the occasional, seemingly impassable area or unnecessarily pesky boss. It’s these moments that reduces the game’s pace to a snail’s crawl and makes each room’s tiny environment feel truly limited and claustrophobic. Slightly out-of-reach objects become even much more aggravating and some seemingly solved puzzles simply don’t work.

The one glitch with the otherwise smooth touchscreen controls are when trying to tap an object or opponent to grab it. While most often it will latch on as it should, it will sometimes mistake it for an attack, resulting in a hit from a well-protected baddie when you really meant to make an armor-negating grab.

Those these moments of aggravating yin are sporadic, they are just frequent enough to negate the game’s good features.

Hong Kung Fui Seng?

For the first 10 minutes of Kung Fu Panda, I was ready to toss the DS cart into a cursed pond for eternity. After than and for a couple hours, I was convinced this was going to be a surprise hit of the year. Unfortunately, annoying moments crept in often enough to ruin the game’s feng shui and make its weaknesses glaringly apparent.

If you want to see a well-executed exercise in touchscreen controls, then this is certainly a worthwhile game to try, if only for academic reasons. Otherwise (and especially for pre-teen gamers), wait for it to hit the discount bins.

Site [Kung Fu Panda] Read [DSFanboy]

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