Kung Fu Panda

Rating Everyone Genre adventure Publisher Activision External Links Official Kung Fu Panda Website

If you’ve seen some of my other reviews you know that I have no love for movie-based video games. Generally they’re poorly designed, hastily finished cash grabs meant to tie in to the movie release and then fade into the bargain bin. Kung Fu Panda managed to exceed my low expectations and it turns out to be not that bad of a game. Keeping in mind that its primary target is a younger gamer, I’d say you could do much worse.

The plot of the game is nothing new and follows the movie fairly closely with a few side adventures thrown in. It’s your basic “zero to hero” story. Gameplay itself is also nothing earth shattering, but it’s well done. It’s a pretty standard adventure game. Each level gives you a task that must be completed. To add a little depth, there are also optional quests in most of the levels such as finding 10 vases or freeing all the imprisoned citizens. The side quests don’t have to be done to move on in the game, but if you want 100% completion on the level and the achievement that goes with it, you’ll have to do it all.

The levels feature a wide variety of tasks, which is a nice change since so many of these movie games get repetitive in a hurry. Some levels are as simple as fighting the boss at the end of the stage while others require you to protect rooms and treasures. While fighting is featured all the way through, even that has a decent variety. You have basic fast and strong attacks that can be used alone or put into combos to provide big damage. You also pick up special moves as the story progresses. Some moves work on some enemies better than others, so it’s not always as easy as a simple button mash to get through the game.

Given the history of the genre, gameplay gets pretty high marks. It’s challenging enough, especially for the target audience, but it’s not so simple that I ever really got bored. Visuals and voice work are a definite enhancement. The environment is beautifully done and gives the levels an expansive feel even though you’re normally kept to a pretty small area. The real surprise to me came in the voice work. I even made the comment while playing that Jack Black is really making this game. The dialogue is hilarious and I found myself laughing out loud several times while playing. It turns out though, and really shouldn’t be a huge surprise, that most of the voice work in the game isn’t done by the actors from the movie. That aside, the voice actor playing the part of Po really nails not only Jack Black’s sound, but also his comedic timing. If I hadn’t done some research and watched the credits at the end of the game, I probably would have gone on thinking they actually did get Black to do Po’s voice.

While the gameplay is admittedly fun, it’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Other than going back to finish off the quests to get achievement or items that weren’t found the first time through, there isn’t much replay value. The big knock though is the length of the game. Playing through the game on normal difficulty doesn’t take too much longer than actually watching the movie. While I don’t need a 30 hour game to feel like I’ve accomplished something, if I’m paying full price for a game I should be able to get more than 4-5 hours of gameplay out of it.

In the end, Kung Fu Panda surpassed my expectations and is one of the few movie based video games that turned out well. Given the short length, I don’t think it’s worth the full price. Give it a few months and you can probably find plenty of copies at bargain prices. If you absolutely have to play it now, get a rental. You should have plenty of time to knock out the whole game in the rental period.