Kung Fu Chaos

Yikes! It's eating the stage!

Kung Fu Chaos is what happens when movie making goes so far past bad that it becomes unintentionally funny. In a similar frame to "Loons: The Fight for Fame", Kung Fu Chaos pits a cast of twelve lunatics against each other and the environment in a fight to, well, the death or something.

Each character has his own style - Monkey Magic, Agile Panda, and so on - and is able to execute a handful of visually impressive moves.

The levels are heavily themed and range from the traditional saloon punch-up to a distinctly tongue-in-cheek Titanic-a-like.

So endeth the summary. You pick a character, you hit things.

On your own...

I vant to dreenk your blood!

The basic premise of KFC is similar to that of Loons: The Fight for Fame. The player controls an actor in a cheesy 1970s Hong Kong action movie and must perform a series of tasks under the beady eye of the director. The player is rated on his performance, with zero stars an abject failure, three stars a break even pass, and five stars for Oscar material. Your rating is calculated from the number of enemies you vanquish and the number of times you are killed, along with a time factor.

Kung Fu Chaos features a handful of play modes, but the first you're likely to attempt is the single player game. Titled "Ninja Challenge", this mode requires the player to battle his way through six movie sets. The aims of each stage vary - from straightforward brawling through the scrolling set to catching falling stuntmen (while avoiding falling cows, bizarrely), with a bit of princess-tossing thrown in for good measure.

The obligatory end of levels bosses make a brief appearance, but are fairly easy to dispatch. All of this takes place under the beady eye of the Director who screams random abuse at you as you're playing.

Playing through these levels is pretty easy, but receiving a full five-star rating is considerably more difficult. The action is frantic and often confusing, never giving you a second to regroup.

...or with a friend

Spot the confused player on the top right.

The majority of Kung Fu Chaos' "depth" lies in the multiplayer modes. The game supports one to four players, as well as AI players, in multiplayer modes. These modes include Smash Bros style battle, championship, and freestyle.

These modes play in essentially the same way as single player but with, er, more players. It's in these modes that most of the game's charm is apparent. Frantically kicking the living daylights out of your mates can be deeply satisfying, and helps to disguise some of the game's shortcomings.

Freestyle mode is probably the best of the bunch - allowing you to have an open ended punch up in the location of your choice.

Controlling the Chaos

Monkey madness!

With such a large number of playable characters, it may come as a bit of a surprise that they all play in more or less the same way. Each character feels exactly the same, motion wise, and the combat moves - although themed differently, have the same effects.

You have a kick button, a punch button, a block button and no (that's right, no) combos. Button mashing the kick and punch buttons will inevitably lead to your opponent being knocked on his back. At this point, holding down the taunt key will unleash a tirade of abuse at him which serves the dual purpose of keeping him down for longer and charging your power-up meter.

A full power-up meter allows you to unleash a ridiculously overpowered supermove, flattening everything in your path. These power-up moves are different for each character but generally have the same effect.

As an analogy, imagine a racing game such as Gran Turismo which boasts dozens of different cars. Now imagine all of the cars are Ford Mondeos, but in different colors. You get the idea? There really isn't as much variety here as you might think.

Casting a glance around

I told you to watch out for that iceberg!

One of the most difficult opponents in the game is the environment itself. True to the zero-budget style of the Hong Kong movies the game parodies, everything is literally falling apart around you, forcing you to keep one eye on your surroundings and the other on your opponents.

This results in an extremely confusing game. There is so much going on and the characters look so similar that there are frequent moments where you just don't know where (or who) you are. Usually resulting in something collapsing under you and robbing you of a life.

Frustrating though they are, the environments are very well thought out and extremely well rendered. The graphical quality of the game is very high, and the brightly colored scenes move by smoothly and quickly with no slowdown, despite the chaos onscreen. The characters themselves are a little jerky in their animations, but the game progresses so quickly that you'll rarely notice this.

Nuts and bolts

Which one am I?

The soundtrack is cheese. Alright, so it's supposed to be bad, but that doesn't make it any easier to listen to. From the "Enter the Dragon" music on the opening screen to the god-awful "Kung Fu Fighting", KFC reminds us of the one part of these movies that wasn't a laughing matter.

The sound effects, on the other hand, are excellent. The narration is funny and well acted, and the meaty thwacks of opponents running into your flailing limbs never fail to raise a smile.

Overall presentation is very slick, but it doesn't disguise the flaws in the game. It's just too easy to lose track of what's going on and there just isn't enough variety to keep you coming back. In the end, those looking for a beat-em-up would be better off looking elsewhere - detailed and involved combat is not what this game is about. As a party game with a few mates around, KFC fares better but it's by no means the best party game out there. Sadly, it's about the only game of its kind for the Xbox. KFC is a great game to rent for a party, but hang on to your buying money until something better comes along.