Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the kung-fu flick that took the box office
by storm back in 2000. While audiences stood amazed at the graceful flying,
amazingly choreographed fight scenes and entrancing story, a few gamers left
the theatres wondering why games couldn’t be like that. As Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon went on to gross more then 200 billion in the box office many gamers
were surprised that the project was not picked up by a development house looking
to turn the license into easy money.

Over 4 years later the development team at Lightweight, under the supervision
of their parent company Genki, has taken up the license and created an action
adventure title by the same name. In hopes of recreating the magic of the movie
the team at Genki put many hours into the fighting aspects of the movie, both
the blocking as well as the attacking. By giving gamers the ability to control
their favorite characters and fight with the same maneuvers they do in the movie,
Genki is hoping to score a knockout with gamers. Is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
going to join the club of rare successful movie-to-game conversions?

Gameplay
The game begins much like the movie with your character attempting to escape
after stealing the sword, Green Destiny, from its owner Master Li Mu Bai. As
the thief you begin your escape through the streets of town stopping shortly
to dispatch of the guards that are trying to stop you, all the while being tailed
by Yu Shu Lien, a friend of Master Li Mu Bai. Attempting to recreate the feel
of the movie, level changes contain movie clips or in game rendered scenes to
help progress the story along it’s path and explain why you are in your current
situation.

As mentioned earlier the fighting in the game is of course the main focus,
and Genki went to great lengths to make that evident. Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon features 5 types of attacks, both armed and un-armed attacks can be done
in light or heavy mode, and a special move that can be done when grabbing a
dazed opponent. The attacking portion of the fights work off a combo system,
mixing armed and un-armed attacks will result in longer strings, though it is
harder to pull off. Learning to fight with the various weapons in the game as
well as characters is important, as sword fighting varies greatly from fighting
with a spear.

The defensive portion of fighting seems to have had the most attention paid
to it; this is because your character can dodge a flurry of attacks in various
ways. Gone are the days of just standing there blocking swords with your hands,
if timed right your character will actually dip and dodge incoming attacks and
allow you to retaliate if you can time it correctly. Blocking not only happens
when unarmed, but while armed your character will deflect blows with his or
her weapon, moving it to counter the direction of the incoming attack. While
the standard blocking is still in the game, it is only active when you are attempting
to block by holding down the block button and when there is no incoming attacks.
Correctly using the block button in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon becomes a
test of your timing skills, hitting the button instead of holding it down executes
more precisely and shows off the actual work that went into the characters fighting
animations.

Control
The controls are simple to learn and reward the player for learning the rhythm
of the attacks. Since fighting in Crouching Tiger has been made to represent
the real thing, where each attack flows to the next, learning the timing and
tapping block result in wonderful dodging scenes. Lightweight did a wonderful
job of keeping the controls simple and rewarding players for not just button
mashing but fighting patiently and learning the rhythm of the game. Featuring
two armed attack buttons, one for heavy and one for light, as well as two unarmed
attacks, also light and heavy, the game gives the player control over how they
fight.

Overall the game controls require at max 10-15 minutes to get the foundation
down, and an additional 20 minutes at most to learn the rhythm effectively.
There is one major problem with this title however; the camera really is the
down fall. Thought you are able to control the camera, the controls are very
precise and for grabbing ladder, wall jumps etc. the camera has to be lined
up correctly before you can easily do these maneuvers. The controls also don’t
seem to flow nicely, while fighting is smooth, the wall jumps and grabbing ledges
doesn’t always happen the first time. I was actually stuck in one location
with no way out the first 2 times I played the game; then I stopped going down
there.

Graphics

The graphical portion of the game is just above standard. The game features
wonderful character modeling and the job on copying the look of the characters
from the movie was well done. On the subject of animation the fighting sequences
were nicely laid out and truly show off the abilities your character has when
ducking and dodging attacks. As you expect to see in the movies, the game features
very fluid fighting, each move nicely connects to the next with no hesitation
or pause, if timed correctly. The job Lightweight and Genki did of giving the
player the ability to recreate the exact fight scenes from the movie by placing
all of their moves in the game was simply amazing.

The characters are amazing; unfortunately the levels are not as impressive.
In terms of the modeling in the game it accurately reflects the look of the
movie and what were are used to seeing in similar kung-fu movies. The problem
however is the developers didn’t take the time to extend the levels past the
walls, for show at least. This leaves your character often scaling walls and
staring over a wall into the abyss that seems to surround the city. Each section
before loading the next also seems relatively small; you often end up dispatching
a few enemies and then watching another cut scene.

Audio
The sounds in the game are nicely done with the game featuring music from the
actual movie to help set the mood of the levels. The sound effects are also
well done with the sounds of deflecting swords as you come under attack by a
flurry of enemies attempting to stop you along your path to completing your
goal. As a whole the sound effects are rather basic, while the addition of using
the music from the movie was rather nice, you only notice the sounds off the
weapons and enemies falling, sounds which end up becoming repetitive over time.

Replay Value
With each completed level in the game grading the player according to their
performance, perfection becomes they key element. There are many unlockable
features in the game from interviews, pictures to an unlockable character. Playing
through the game more then once, if the first time you didn’t get all A’s, will
get you new features and bonus items for your time spent going through the levels
again. The ability to unlock a new character increases the replay value and
gives the player something to strive for.

Overall Score
Overall Score: 7.7/10 [Not an Average]

Reviewers Additional Comments
While the review sounded overly positive the controls really do stop this game
from getting a higher score. I commend Lightwave for the ease of ability in
using and mastering the wonderful blocking system, it gives the end user a wonderful
feeling of accomplishment without requiring you to be a master gamer. However
while the fighting and blocking systems as well polished for variety and combo’s,
the movement and camera become more of a challenge then the actual people you
are fighting. Perhaps more time should have gone into character control then
the fighting system. Thumbs up for the graphics and fighting, thumbs down for
movement and camera work.

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