Kung Fu Rider Review (PS3 Move)

Kung Fu Rider is a great game. It could even be an awesome game, but somewhere along the development cycle it seems that someone at Sony convinced their Japan Studio that it needed to have Playstation Move controls, only. That’s when things went south and this game’s destiny was forever altered. Instead of being that awesome game that it almost is, it is just a great game with a crappy control scheme, almost like Lair (anyone? anyone?) While I thought Lair might overcome it’s sort of odd yet interesting control scheme and still shine, I was wrong.

This time round, I won’t be fooled again, as The Who said. Kung Fu Rider is a great idea and fairly cool to boot, but the Move controls are cumbersome, inaccurate and only seem to work against the gamer. All in all, it’s a poor first showing for Playstation Move and the game feels like it was shoehorned into the controls.

Honestly, I can’t understand why you can’t play this game with a standard SIXAXIS. There is nothing in the controls that warrants its being Move only, except obviously, pressure from Sony to make it so. And so yet another awesome game, only achieves a mid-range gaming experience. Hopefully, they’ll realize this, and in an update allow standard controls.

Other than that the game is fantastic. You take on the role of Tobin or Karin and have to race through the streets to avoid mafioso, collect cash and speed boosts. The goal is to get to the van and escape. There’s very little story aside from the two of them chatting, with horrible British accents. Apparently Tobin is the boss and they took some ’dodgy work’ that landed them in trouble with the Mafia, classic. It’s set in Hong Kong and has the feel of a 70’s Kung Fu film, without the Kung Fu. The game reminds me of Pain in some ways which is no surprise as they both use the Havok engine for physics.

The graphics are, for a PS3 game, cartoonish. They lean more towards Pain than towards the more realistic graphics we’ve seen in numerous other games. They certainly fit the campy feeling of the game and give it a bit of personality. Unfortunately the rag-doll physics are too over the top even for this type of game.