On top of that, there are all sorts of things that I see as issues with the game. For example, a man carrying a ladder will knock you out even if you happen to brush the ladder as you are jumping over it. It’s as if the ladders are immovable objects in the game. The same goes for downed enemies. If they happen to ricochet off something and catch you unawares, even though they themselves are in the air, they will take you out. This is in direct opposition to the numerous items in the environment, like 55 gallon steel barrels, compressed gas cylinders and numerous boxes, tables, chairs, and other items that you can push through with almost no problem. Then again, you might get wrecked, it’s all very hit or miss. Actually, that could be said about the whole game really, mostly due to the poor controls. Even nudging a moving car from behind will instantly flatten you which is sort of ridiculous.

The sound, aside from the voice work, is passable but most of the time you sort of block it out as it has almost no real impact on the gameplay experience. The main theme song on the menu is pretty cool but after that they all get sort of redundant. Luckily, Japan Studio realized this and allows you to play your own tunes, provided you’ve got some music taking up space on your PS3 hard drive.

Levels are often laid out with multiple paths and a set of levels will all use the same zone so it’s nothing all that expansive. Each level will offer you different routes to take so on one you might have a direct route to your escape van while on another you’ll have to take a longer route. There are large areas where you are not given any pointers in the game on which direction to go. Considering that you’ve got a time limit and time is also a factor in score, that’s just poor design. You can often end up going in a direction only to learn you’ve just lost 10 seconds, when you only have 100 to start.

Then after you finish all the individual levels you are allowed a free play in the zone so that you can collect 20 Sherlock coins. Why Sherlock? Who knows. This isn’t so bad really, but again the controls suck much of the fun out of it. It would have been nice if you could have this free play first so you could get to know the whole zone before having to play through multiple times to learn the whole zone. The coins allow you to unlock extra rides for the other levels. Everything from cheap no-arm office chairs to shopping carts, luggage carts and more are available. Too bad they’re so extremely difficult to get.

Overall, Kung Fu Rider would have been a great game, if they had focused more on the actual gameplay and physics and less on cramming the game into the Playstation Move controls. As I said earlier, I hope they release an update that allows you to play the game with a standard controller as I believe it will do the game wonders. The game is retailing for $40 but I wouldn’t suggest you buy it until it drops to below $20 because it’s just a bundle of frustration thanks to the Playstation Move controls. Even then, I played through some 20 or so levels, but I now know why there’s a soft rubber ball on the end of the Move controller. It’s so when you throw it in frustration it doesn’t do as much damage to whatever it hits. I think one of the major problems with the game is the light-hearted feel of it versus the horribly difficult controls. To push forward you move the controller up and down. Up is also jump so you often do that without meaning to.

Kung Fu Rider is rated E10+ by the ESRB.