PALGN Review: Kung Fu Panda

PALGN Writes: "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." 6/10