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By KevinG (25th Jul 2008)

Are you ready to help make Po become a true master of Kung Fu and release his awesomeness in the quest to save the Furious Five and defeat Tai Lung? Then it’s time to unleash your legendary stylus skills and lead Po through his adventures to become the Dragon Warrior or its back to the noodle shop with you!

The rule of thumb, with movie tie-ins generally, is to save your thumb the bother or the blisters and play something else. But for Kung Fu Panda, Vicarious Visions have made the effort to create an enjoyable interactive adventure that borrows well from the movie’s storyline, and will no doubt be as enjoyable for younger players as watching Po’s antics on the big screen. While the game offered no sustained challenge to my legendary Kung Fu skills, the cries of exasperation heard elsewhere in the house and the questions of “How did you get passed that bit?” indicate that it definitely delivers to its target audience.

Having played the demo on the 360 I was not looking forward to DS version as I thought it would be lacking in some way. I was pleasantly surprised right from the start as the introduction draws heavily on the visual style and story of the movie. Not only that, there is full voice acting for all the storyline, with voices sounding true to the movie characters.

For those not familiar with the movie (get familiar with it, as it is a very entertaining film), it is based around the accident-prone Po, a panda who dreams of escaping his life working in his father\'s noodle house and becoming a martial art legend. After yet another hilarious calamity Po is selected to become the Dragon Master, much to the displeasure of Master Shifu and his pupils, the Furious Five. Po begins a crash course in Kung Fu with the hope that he can defeat the deadly Tia Lung.

The action in the game is as fast paced as the movie, starting straight after the short introduction when Po learns his first Kung Fu techniques from Master Shifu. This is swiftly followed by Monkey delivering the news that the rest of the Furious Five have been captured by Tai Lung. Thus Po starts on his quest to become a legend in the art of Kung Fu and rescue Mantis, Crane, Snake and Tigress.

With great attention to detail, each environment has its own authentic feel, from snow capped mountains to dungeons and epic waterfalls. The game environments are well rendered and this adds greatly to the whole experience. I found the character design to be a little blotchy at times (when Po is running around) but it did not distract or interfere with the overall effect of the game.

The top screen displays all the scenes in Po’s current area, marked out in little linked boxes, areas such as the Village in the Valley of Peace or the Bamboo Forest. This makes it easy to see your progress in any given area. Your current scene is indicated by the Po icon being in one of the boxes and the ticked boxes show the scenes Po has already completed. Some boxes will have multiple exits but not all exits will be open for exploration until the story dictates that Po should be guided down that path. It\'s a shame that this wasn\'t explored further because the game could easily have been expanded, but the potential for more adventure was lost to linear progression.

Po’s Chi bar can be seen in the top screen and it extends to become a full dragon as the game progresses. The Chi bar needs to be maxed to use the full awesomeness of the Dragon Master. However, if you collect all 100 souls of the Tenchu Army, released when Po breaks an urn at the start of the game, you will constantly have access to the Dragon Master powers. The number of souls left to find in each area is also displayed in the top screen.

The touch screen is where the mythical mastery of Monkey, Mantis, Crane, Snake and Tigress techniques will occur. The direction pad or buttons are used for moving, jumping once and rolling Po around in a ball. For attacking enemies, picking up and throwing items or attackers and the various jumps, control is via the touch screen. At the start, when there are few techniques to use, controlling Po is fairly simple. When you learn all of the techniques then things can get a bit awkward, as it\'s not uncommon to find him doing something completely different to what you intended. To alleviate this, time stands still when the stylus is in on the touch pad, so you can take all the time you want to get the move right. Some care is required though as Po can only carry out two jump moves before landing. If you are not careful there will be a lot of scene restarts after Po plummets to the depths below.

A large part of Kung Fu Panda involves fighting enemies to progress through a scene, but there are also puzzles that require solving. These can be quite intricate and making use of the items (barrels, exploding boxes) or even the bad guys is vital to success. If you leave a scene or drop out of the screen, it will be reset. This can be handy if you want to start again but quite annoying if you accidentally leave. Some of the hardest puzzles are the scenes where impeccable timing is required. In one scene Po must race an arrow to the far side of the scene by jumping from platform to platform and escape through the door before it closes. To make it more challenging, the platforms drop milleseconds after landing on them and hitting the arrow means starting at the beginning again. Other puzzles require some more brain power as they don\'t have the answer scrawled across them and ofgten require some dexterity in addition to timing - barrels need to be thrown in the air, caught mid-air, and then, using the Monkey technique, used as a launching platform.

As you lead Po in the rescue of the Furious Five he will learn their techniques and use them to progress through the scenes until the epic show down with Tai Lung. While using each character technique, the animation changes to match that character. So with Crane’s improved jump Po will be replaced by Crane as you fly through the air or with the impressive and very powerful Tigress move, you can watch her plough through the enemy ranks. This move is virtually unstoppable when Po has attained Dragon Master status.

One thing which I think coul have been included was some form of multiplay, a download play option where players could battle against each other using Po and the various Furious Five characters or even have co-op puzzle solving. It does state that there is DS Download play on the game cover but I could not find the option in game.

Mastering the Kung Fu techniques and figuring out the puzzles is the beating heart of Kung Fu Panda. Along the way you will amused by the comical Po, entertained by the excellent animation, infuriated by the puzzles and relieved when it all works out. This is a must have game for younger players as it offers gameplay they are not likely to see in their age bracket. I fear it doesn\'t have the longevity to keep most players happy as the only real replay value is to finish off collecting the souls of the Tenchu Army, or seeing how quickly it could be finished a second time. There may already have been too many cynical movie related games released but this is not one of them. So bow down to the awesomeness of Po, the Dragon Master and go kick some butt Kung Fu Panda style.