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Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (or Why It’s Good You Can Rent Games)

First of all I think this game should be sold with a free six pack of beer. You see, this is just one of those games that make a lot more sense when you’re just relaxing with a beer and some mates and enjoying smacking people around. If you try to take Tao Feng any more seriously than that then you’re not going to have any fun.

It’s “by” one of the co-creators of Mortal Kombat (John Tobias, if you must know) and it shows in the art design. It’s very American not only in the shading style (everything is rendered in a grimy, realistic way that makes everything look like it’s in a superhero comic book) but the character design is full of American influences. For one thing there’s a Christina Aguilera lookalike (complete with skimpy costume that gets even skimpier as the game goes on), a Trinity from The Matrix clone and a Hulk wannabe. No fighting game would be complete without the traditional (or downright clichéd) assortment of drunken old guys who lie down in the middle of a fight or the young shirtless guy with long pants who started studying martial arts in the womb. They’re all generic to a T but unless you’re the kind of person who spends their weekends writing fan fiction about video game characters this won’t matter too much.

The control system is reminiscent of Tekken in that each button controls a limb…sort of. The two main limb buttons are for the character’s more powerful (or “lead”) arm or leg and the other is for the weaker one. The way it works in practice is that you’re best off starting your attack with a lead punch or kick and then following it up into a combo with a weaker (but faster) limb. Do it well and you can almost convince people that you know what you’re doing right off the bat.

One thing I like about Tao Feng is the way they got around being able to win just by mashing buttons. If you keep using the same limb repeatedly it takes damage and eventually breaks. In fact part of the whole USP (Unique Selling Point, don’tcha know) is that the characters in the game show permanent damage during the fight. One thing that really bugged me about Tekken and the like is that the characters looked exactly the same after the fight as they did at the beginning. Here clothes rip, scars form and bones break. After each round you get a really nice close up of the defeated character as they get up and are covered in cruises and cuts. Sure it’s a gimmick but it’s a damn good one and something that really should have been done a long time ago. It’s one of the things about the game that really stands out and adds quite a lot to the experience. I mean, watch a guy get his arm broken and then spend the rest of the fight with it dangling around and tell me that doesn’t look cool.

While we’re on the subject of damage to the characters, one other thing I really like about the environments is that you can interact with them in pretty cool ways. Even just the way concrete walls show damage when you get punched into them looks great and part of the fun is seeing just how much you can destroy the backgrounds. Pressing the left trigger near certain objects will make your character use them in combat – for example, a steel upright pole can be used to prop yourself up and let you swing your legs around, Matrix Reloaded style. Nice touch.

Good – and more importantly, fluid – animation is paramount to a good fighter since you need to know exactly what your opponent is doing. For the most part the animation in Tao Feng is smooth and expressive, portraying the violence with just the right amount of realism. However the throws and grapples are not as creative – their motion-captured roots are really evident here and so the characters look stiff and almost afraid to hurt each other.

The move list is pretty solid, especially if you’re one of those people who enjoys memorising all the moves for each character (and there’s a hundred each). Anyone who doesn’t yet own a Controller S will have one more reason to get one when they play Tao Feng, since the digital pad is the only way to play. You can use the analogue stick if you really want, but unless your fighting strategy is “run awkwardly around in no real direction and never move in the way you want while walking directly into your enemy” it’s not really advised.

Now the drawbacks. The single-player mode is pretty ordinary, with enemy AI not putting up much of a fight. The full motion video sequences were grainy and not very Xbox-ish – when you’ve got in-game realtime graphics that are better than the pre-rendered video you’ve got a problem. There’s also a few issues with the character balance – the faster characters have the edge in every fight here, even though they are less powerful. This is simply because they can get in lots of quick hits, charge up their Chi energy and restock their energy bar before a stronger character can land a hit.

Pretty much the number one caveat I have about this game is the way the camera flips one hundred and eighty degrees for no real reason a few times during each fight. This is an annoyance that grows from petty to significant depending on how involved you are in the fight, since your character that is on the left of the screen suddenly is on the right and you lose half a second while your hands catch up with what just happened. The hardcore fighting fans out there will know what a difference half a second can make – but then again, you’ve got to remind yourself not to take Tao Feng too seriously.

It’s one of those games you have a laugh with, and nothing more than that. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing, especially when you’re renting it for the night. Not the best fighter on the Xbox (that honour goes to Soul Calibur 2) but definitely the one to go for if you want instant (and disposable) silly beat ‘em up fun.

(PS: Am I the only one who thinks it’s amusing that this game got the exact same classification (“M15+”) that Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior got on the SNES like twelve years ago? How times change…)

  posted by Gazunta · at 11:00 pm · filed under Reviews