Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend

"I played it so you don't have to."

Honestly now, how hard could it be to make a good Bruce Lee game? What's wrong with you, video game industry? You can make a passable game based on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer but the greatest martial artist of all time is just out of your reach? What's wrong with the world when Sarah Michelle Gellar has one up on Bruce Lee? All we need Bruce to do is kick a whole lot of ass, and if a blonde from Sunnydale can do it then I think Mr.Lee should be just fine. Unfortunately for Bruce, he keeps ending up in the hands of morons who spend 80% of their time playing ''who can fart the loudest?'' before they all jump up and realize, in unison, ''Holy hell! We were supposed to be working on the game, and all this time we've been trying to beat Steve's 40 minute non-stop toot-a-thon!''. The result is always the same; a sloppy, terrible Bruce Lee game that makes us all cringe and look away in horror as we're let down by the industry one more time.

In this tour-de-crap Bruce Lee ''stars'' as Hai Feng, your generic martial artist with a generic master who gets snuck up on by generic thugs and assassinated. Return of the Legend starts out boring and it keeps the pace all the way through. Hai Feng's master is dead at the hands of a shadowy cult/guild/drug ring (whatever) and he now has a reason to wander the streets of Hong Kong punching passers-by in the throat.

Hai Feng: ''Who killed my master?!'' *THROAT PUNCH*

Random Person: ''Gurgle!'' *THUD!*

Hai Feng: ''Talk, damn you!'' *KICK, KICK*

We said he was a good fighter, we didn't say he was smart. It's never explained why the Yakan went out of their way to kill Hai Feng's master in the first place. All we know is that an old man is dead and people need the tar beat out of them. Hai Feng embarks on his quest for revenge and soon meets up with a government agent by the name of Booth, whom is investigating the Yakan for various reasons. Most likely because the Yakan appear to have their own drug-filled boats and warehouses filled with surplus Army weaponry as well as tanks (!). Can someone explain to me what's going on here? Why does a martial arts group have drugs, guns and enough firepower to take over a small country? Don't think too hard about it, or you'll get a migraine. Copious amounts of weaponry or no, Hai Feng decides to infiltrate the Yakan so he can learn who killed his beloved mentor. The Yakan employ the typical bad-guy technique of hiring a countless number of martial artists and thugs whom are all exactly alike except for a couple of palette swaps here and there. This is to drive Hai Feng crazy. ''Didn't I just throw you through a box?!'' he'll say, infuriated, ''I did! Except you were wearing a slightly uglier suit!''. All your opposition falls into four rough categories;

A) Martial Arts Guy

B) Guy In Ugly Suit

C) Guy [A] With Stick

D) Boss Guy

Variety is the spice of life, or so they say. Thankfully between rounds of punching Martial Arts Guy With Stick and Ugly Guy In Suit you'll run across a boss like Afro Guy or Man With Chain, all of them threatening in their own pixilated ways. ''He has an ugly suit AND a chain!'', you'll squeal in terror. Do not fear, gentle gamer! There are unlockable costumes!

Well, by ''unlockable costumes'' I mean ''different color shirt and pants''. Now you can give those bad guys a taste of their own medicine! You start with two, but when you beat the game you're awarded with an extra color! Grey! Not only that, but you'll also gain access to the ''Directors Cut'' mode which means you get to play the game again, only stuff is in different spots and Martial Arts Guy With Stick is slightly harder! Too bad there's no incentive to even play through the game once.

As a 2d brawler Return of the Legend has a surprising amount of moves going for it, it's just too bad that the controls are really awkward. ''A'' is your jump button, while ''B'' and ''R'' are for punching and kicking. The ''L'' button is for blocking. Thankfully you can change them in the options. Awkward controls or no, Hai Feng is still about as responsive as a comatose sloth. Pummeling the bad guys usually dissolves into a similar pummeling of your ''B'' and ''R'' buttons, and you can get through the game easily by button mashing, with the exception of one or two boss fights where a little blocking and a bit of jumping is necessary. Speaking of jumping, you'll be doing plenty. The Yakan subscribe to ''Evil Home Architecture Monthly'' and their lairs, boats, tanks, warehouses, etc, are all designed so that no actual humans can get around inside of them. Midnight runs to the little martial artists' room must be a pain, because you've got to wall jump and climb three hanging rope nets in order to get up to the green key in order to unlock the door to the bathroom, which is three floors below and just past the series of bottomless pits.

Yes, it's sad to say that most of the stages are simple fetch quests in which you beat on a few half-witted henchpersons in order to find the next key. This is odd considering you're allowed to break down closed doors and piles of rocks on more than one occasion. I suppose all the important doors are made out of titanium or something. Aside from that there's a couple of instances where you need to rescue a few people, but the other main part aside from the key-hunting is stealth. Yes, you read it right. You've got to use stealth to sneak past your foes in more places of the game than I'm comfortable mentioning. Everything about Return of the Legend is designed around action, and it's obvious stealth has no place here. Bruce Lee is not meant to be skulking around in the shadows. Still, you're going to be doing it a lot so you may as well get used to it. You won't enjoy it though. Getting caught is made all too easy by enemies with ubervision, able to see you before you can see them. Here's where a lackluster brawler degrades into a horrid and repetitious cycle of trial and error.

Return of the Legend offers up some equally tired and repetitive audio and visuals. The graphics are horrid and the backgrounds are used again and again. That's not to mention the repeat appearances of the aeformentioned bad guys whom are all similar, just pallet swapped. Music is equally horrid, to go along with the sound effects. Happily, you can turn the music off but you'll still need to endure the sound effects. Also present in the options menu is the ability to put the game into ''sleep mode'' (?), which I believe is a vague hint at what you could be doing instead of playing Return of the Legend. You should only do one or the other, because I tried sleeping after playing Return of the Legend and I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming in horror. I still have nightmares and I can still see it when I shut my eyes.

No matter how you slice it, dice it, kick it, or throat punch it, Return of the Legend is utterly terrible. Pounding the life out of a few ugly thugs is fun for only a brief moment or two, until it gets boring and repetitive. The stealth stages finish the job by sucking the remainder of fun from the game while the music and sound get on your nerves. I warn you once more; do not play this game. If you should see your friend playing this game you should have him hospitalized before the damage can become too severe, and you should destroy the cartridge, breaking it into pieces and sending them to the far flung corners of a foreign country like Canada.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/04