That's what you get for... for... being round!
When the concept of a movie is 'a panda that learns Kung Fu', the game developers must get a little bit giddy at the thought of gameplay possibilities. No need to create strange concepts to go along with a movie that doesn't feature much action, because a character like Po from Kung Fu Panda is likely going to be in some over-the-top fighting scenes, which opens plenty of doors for action and platforming elements in the game world. Jack Black provides his voice in the game, so straight away the authenticity from the movie is present.
The game is set to feature 13 levels in the single player campaign when it's released, and you'll start off by learning the 'basics' of Kung Fu. The controls are fairly basic, which we'd expect from a casual title such as this; from a third person perspective, left stick moves Po, right stick moves the camera, and the face buttons are designated to your basic jumping and attacking. Po can double-jump to get to higher places, and using different button combinations allows him to kick, punch and grab-and-throw enemies and opponents; we were actually pleased that the combat is reasonably deep for this type of game, while still being very accessible.
Unleashing a series of attacks allows you to literally juggle an enemy in the air with move after move for a short period, and you'll also have access to some special attacks as well to keep things interesting or take down stronger opponents. The game isn't entirely focussed on the combat though - thankfully, there are other platformer-esque elements that will switch it up at times and allow you to take a break from the crazy Kung Fu action. Distractions such as collecting coins while rolling at a very fast pace over jumps and bouncing off rooftops amongst other things breaks up the action and keeps the game from feeling too repetitive. There are also multiplayer modes which we haven't heard any real details about yet, but we can assume some sort of competitive fighting component isn't out of the question.
Normally, we'd place bets on the croc here.
In terms of visuals, Kung Fu Panda also stands out as one of the better movie-to-game translations that we have seen. Environments are varied and colourful, and the animations all look very smooth and quite comical (in a good way). Although we haven't seen the as-yet-unreleased film, the game has a lot of charm and Po himself is a very funny and entertaining character to play as, so it's good to see the comedy of the animated flick crossing over to the game world successfully. We're happy to say that Kung Fu Panda, despite maybe being a little too simplistic for some, is shaping up to at least be a lot of fun, which is more than we can say about some of the other 'movie games' on the market.
Seriously though, the game is looking good. Depending on how much I like the movie, I might just pick this up for a bit of fun.
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