Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise Video Game Review
Written by Michael Siebenaler | | news@toledofreepress.comVideo Game Review by Sagar Sharma – Toledo Free Press
Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise (Qooc Soft)
The Xbox Live Arcade downloadable gaming landscape can be brutal for smaller developers trying not to get lost in the weekly release schedule. With the release of Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise, developer Qooc Soft hopes the core gameplay of their title can speak louder than the flashiness other titles strive for. The story serves little purpose and the simplicity of the game is both its strength and weakness. The game also offers little else to do besides replaying previous levels and having an unforgiving difficulty.
Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise offers a series of arena-based fights while stringing together the bouts with a simple graphic novel story between levels. This simple, familiar story follows General Loh as he searches for his father’s murderer and serves as an excuse for the location changes. If developers created stronger character connections, then the levels would have not felt cumbersome so early on.
Simplicity really defines this game. The presentation is bare bones and menus are ultra simplistic so the player can jump in the action as fast as possible. The main strength of this game lies in its gameplay, which one would expect to be the most important thing in a Kung Fu game. The fighting is mapped only to the “X” and “A” buttons while the rest are for movement and counters. Players can simply just mash these two buttons but would miss the depth Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise offers.
Developers reward players that dig deep into the combat and unlock moves, power-ups, and even the ability to summon allies on the battlefield. Animations are superb and extremely fluid and the frame rate does not take a dip even when the action is most chaotic, which helps this arcade style brawler keep up with its frantic pace.
The game’s main weakness comes from the same source it draws strength from – simplicity. There is only one mode in the game – arena combat against A.I. opponents. Cooperative gameplay is available, which does spice things up, but players still get the same levels from the single player campaign. Qooc Soft tries to offer variety in later levels by offering environmental hazards and enemies that use magical power, but, unfortunately, these things do not quell the repetitiveness. Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is also quite a challenging affair. The enemies come off as being very cheap but even on the easy difficulty level the challenges were frustrating.
The core gameplay creates a pleasant experience though little variety and low replay value holds the game back. The weak story makes players care about why they are fighting endless enemies in the first place. Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise is available for download on the Xbox Live marketplace for 800pts (**1/2, rated T for animated blood violence).
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