Basketball’s a great game, but have you ever tried to play it with a football? It’s a difficult task indeed, what with the elliptic ball’s dual, pointed ends almost denying it entry into the same category of sporting equipment as its spherical cousin. Sure, with luck on your side you can still throw it, bounce it, and even have it bank off the backboard and through the hoop, but when it comes down to it, the difficulty involved in this task makes the round balled version a far more appealing prospect. Kung Fu Panda on the Wii ends up being the awkward gaming twin of its PlayStation 2 counterpart in a similar way. It’s not that Kung Fu Panda is a completely terrible experience - far from it in fact. It’s more that it falls into that growing category of games squeezed onto the Wii, or more importantly, into the console’s controller.
Kung Fu Panda’s controls are manageable, but by no means ideal. The nunchuck is used to move around the screen and combination of various button presses and gesticulations are used for jumping and your multiple moves. It sounds fine until you get to actually doing it - a charged up smash like move requires the nunchuck to be pointed up whilst the remote is pointed down. By the time you’ve finished figuring out where your arms are supposed to be, you’ve been hit and your charge is lost. In the end, the easiest thing to do is simply press the B button for the speedy, light attack as much as possible and hope for the best. Thankfully the game’s combat isn’t any more difficult than trying to navigate its convoluted controls. Although the combat suffers as a result of the Wii’s controllers the Quick Time Events are much better; rather than just hitting a button when it flashes on the screen, a timed swing of the remote is required, allowing you feel linked much more closely with the action.
The 3D brawler follows the story of Po, a panda who, when not thinking about his next meal, dreams of becoming a Kung Fu master. The narrative is pretty much in line with the film, taking us with Po through his journey to become the ‘Dragon Warrior’ to defending the world against the tyrannical Tai Lung. All the main characters are present and you’ll even get to take control of them at some points.
Despite it’s flaws, there’s plenty to love about Kung Fu Panda.
Although the real Jack Black – the voice of Po - is absent from the game, his sound-alike does a fairly good job of narrating the story and providing the odd bit of ingame voice-work every now and then. The comedic moments in the cutscenes are also helped by the actor’s delivery of some fairly funny lines. Overall though, the game’s audio is pretty hit or miss - most of the music sounds great and sets the mood of the levels well, but other aspects of the audio fall flat on their faces. We never want to hear the sound of Po jumping ever again, and we’re sure that the thousands of parents that end up buying this game for their kids will feel the same way, especially after going through the couple of levels that require constant jumps to be made between lily pads floating on an expansive lake.
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