Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus

"Aesthetically stunning, but with sloppy and biff game-mechanics :("

FOREWORD

I CLAPPED with joy when I saw Tao Feng - Fist of the Lotus on sale at my local X-Box shop. I bought it and drove home like a madman possessed, SLAMMED it into my X-Box and played it immediately.

Was I impressed ? Read on ;)

OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVE OF THE GAME

Tao Feng - Fist of the Lotus is a 1-on-1 beat-em 'up where you pick one of the fighters from the two teams on offer - the Pale Lotus (aka the GOOD guys), or the Black Mantis (aka the BAD guys). Each team has one crossover character - as in, a character that USED to be on the other side - Divinity used to be a good girl, and Iron Monk used to be a bad guy, but now it's quite clearly set up as two teams of six fighters a piece.

Your quest is to retrieve several pieces of a given item (the item in question will vary with which fighter you pick). Each piece is guarded by one of the members of the opposing team and, not surprisingly, regardless of the order you choose to fight your opponents, the fights get progressively more difficult with each victory.

GRAPHICS - 9/10

Graphically the game is VERY nice to look at. The characters are well-drawn, fluidly animated and bright. Damage is reflected by bruising and bloodloss, so your fighter will look progressively more haggard as the fight continues, and the backdrops are also very well handled. You can move in and out of the backdrops, and the arenas within which you can fight are quite large and varied - from an amusement arcade to a dock to a dojo and beyond. All very nicely done.

The movements of each character are very well detailed, and clipping and collision detection are almost spot on. All in all a very impressive helping graphically-speaking.

SOUND - 9/10

Very good quality voice-acting throughout. Your matches are narrated, so if for example you pick the Fatalist (my FAVOURITE character), then Wulong Goth - the leader of the Black Mantis team - narrates all your battles, giving you a pre-match breakdown of what to expect from each opponent before the matches begin.

Sometimes this can get a little boring - especially if you've had the CR@P kicked out of you by the same combatant 20 times (and BELIEVE me it'll happen to begin with), but you can skip it after a few seconds of dialogue, so it's not all bad.

The game has another narrator as well - a female voice periodically pops up and calls out "Limb Damage Alert" and "LIMB DAMAGE !!", to keep you in the picture as to how your character is faring vis-a-vis the dreaded 'limb damage' issue.

CONTROLS - 5/10

The controls in this game are, I have to say, NOT the best. It ISN'T a game where you are reduced to frantic button-mashing - far from it in fact. You will find you are reduced to finding 2-3 combos per character that work for you, and doing them REPEATEDLY on each opponent until they die - otherwise you will get the sh!t kicked out of you as the enemies are VERY difficult in places.

Combos are activated by almost clinical combinations of buttons - 1-2-3-SMACK !! And so on ... the game does NOT have a fluid feel - most of the routine 1-2 combos that would work in almost any other fighting game do NOT work in this title, because each character has such a unique fighting style. Divinity for example DANCES around the screen, which is really beautiful to LOOK at, but kinda frustrating to work with.

FIND THE COMBOS THAT WORK FOR EACH CHARACTER AND THE USE THEM AD-NAUSEUM OR YOU WILL HATE THE GAME. That's my best advice ;)

PLOT - 6/10

For a 1-on-1 beat-em 'up, the plot has been given more thought than most ... the retrieval of pieces of the item you're looking for (although I must add it is very convenient to see there are enough pieces of each item to go around between your enemies) keeps you focused on the GOAL at hand - the unification of the pieces to create the complete item. This, I find, is a reasonable incentive to try and beat that last guy ONE more time ... and then just ONE more time after he's pasted you ... and so on and so forth ;)

GAMEPLAY - Varies - 3 through 8/10

I've given this rather BIZARRE score to the gameplay section for a very good reason. This ISN'T Streetfighter ... or Mortal Kombat ... or ANY other fighting game you'll have played. If you want to enjoy it ? You MUST adhere to the rule I put above basically. You MUST find those 2-3 combos that work for you and do them to the exclusion of all other moves, or you will find the gameplay RIGHT down there in the 3-4 section ... if you try and be flash, and whip out combos on the fly ? You'll lose ! Plain and simple. Characters like Fierce Tiger will tear you a new one if you don't stick to the "and a 1, and a 2" routine ...

BUT ... if you DO stick to the pattern I've outlined ? Then the balance of power shifts in your favour. Granted the matches become a little repetitive, but the one thing I found whilst playing this game is that it's ALL about the balance of power. Once you feel like you are beating your opponent into submission, even only using 2-3 combos (which, in ANY other fighting game would make you the BIFFEST mutha on the planet) seems perfectly legitimate and reasonable to me.

There are other things to keep life interesting - your character has a CHI gauge that fills up as you do special moves and, once it has been filled, you can channel your chi into one of your SUPER attacks, all of which are graphically stunning - from Vapor's disappearing / teleportation attacks to Geist's spinning blades to the Fatalist's Runic blast.

Alternatively, if you have suffered limb damage (which is where you have sustained so many successive blows to either your arms or legs that they are crippled and you suffer attack penalties to the tune of 50% when using them), you can channel your chi into healing the afflicted limbs.

Nice twists, but ultimately that 2-3 combo thing is gonna come back to kick you in the @ss ;)

REPLAY VALUE - 5/10

Graphically it's beautiful. Acoustically it's very good. Those are its replay points. You won't miss the irritating fighting mechanics. You *might* miss the bounciness of the characters tho *blush*

VALUE FOR MONEY - 7/10

There are DEFINITELY better fighting games out there - on the X-Box alone there's Dead or Alive 3 (which ROCKS), Soul Calibur II (we're not worthy !! we're not worthy !!) and others, so if it's a toss-up between this game and those I'd DEFINITELY pick one of them over this.

If, however, you're a fighting games NUT like myself ? It's not a WASTE of money to make a part of your collection ... it's just not the best there is :(

OVERALL - 6/10 (This is NOT an average)

An aesthetically beautiful fighter that is let down by the mechanics of its gameplay. The attention to detail on the characters and the MORE than reasonable sounds are what save it from being a waste of money. You could DEFINITELY do better, but could quite easily do worse too ;)

MAIN GOOD POINTS

* BEAUTIFUL graphics
* Very reasonable sounds including decent voice-actors (which makes a nice change !!)
* Chi attacks are beautiful, if short-lived.

MAIN BAD POINTS

* BIFF gameplay - you have to resort to using 2 or 3 combos to win and that's not cool.
* Damaged replay value for the gameplay issue.

SO SHOULD YOU GET IT ?

If you're a die-hard fighting games fan then it's not an embarrassing addition to your collection. If you're a little short of dosh or are trying to decide whether to get this game instead of say ... Dead or Alive 3, Enter the Matrix or Soul Calibur II ? Decision made - get one of them - plain and simple.

I won't be giving away my copy, but I would urge anybody thinking of buying it to rent it beforehand to make sure it's for you ;)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/04