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Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus Review
Chris Leyton
28/04/2003
Xbox fighting fans haven't had a lot to shout about recently, can Tao Feng deliver the goods?
If thereâs one genre thatâs relatively weak amongst the Xbox catalogue itâs the fighting one; until Soul Calibur 2 finds its way to these shores, Kung Fu Chaos is about the only fighter we could honestly recommend on the format.
Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus comes from the co-creator of Mortal Kombat, so hopes were high that he could rediscover the magical touch and leave us forgetting the lamentable Kakuto Chojin.
Taking place in a gritty futuristic Metro-China, two Chinese sects known as the Blank Mantis and Pale Lotus are engaged in everlasting battle to destroy one-another. The story tells of each groups mission to discover ancient artefacts, which are said to grant the owner immortality.
This quest provides the story to the games main single player mode, the âQuestâ mode. Each artefact has been broken into six pieces and placed into the hands of fighters from the opposing sect, so players have to fight six different characters in a similar (but nowhere near as good) manner to the âMission Battleâ in Soul Calibur.
Thankfully the game makes some attempts to re-invent the fighting genre, gone is the traditional three round fights replaced by a system similar to Killer Instinct. Players have three life bars which must be depleted to win the fight, when one bar is run down the fight momentarily stops as the fighters gather their breathe. Itâs a system that youâll either like or not, personally I prefer the âthree boutâ fights made famous in Streetfighter 2, however fortunately it doesnât have too much affect on the overall fighting.
The game also features character damage that actually influences how the fights turn out. Following suit with the Tekken School of fighting, each face button is assigned to either a left-sided or right-sided punch or kick; taking too much damage to either of these areas will result in bruises and cuts, take too much and your limb will break which will adversely affect the way in which you fight.
By pressing the shoulder buttons youâll be able to use the various objects within the environments to your advantage. A lot was made of this feature in the games development; by pressing a direction and a shoulder button you can swing around poles and leap off objects to launch a counter-strike. Whilst itâs nice to see developers trying with new ideas in this genre, the implementation feels a little weak and youâll find yourself forgetting about using this manoeuvre after the initial âcoolâ factor has worn down.
Despite having a mystical storyline and featuring some strange looking characters, the fighting system places emphasis on combos and realistic moves then towards fireball projectiles and special moves. The overall fighting system is geared towards the simplistic side of the scale and compares favourably to the likes of Dead or Alive 3 and Tekken (Virtua Fighter purists may want to stick clear). The combo system works well and places strong emphasis on timing and building up a rhythm, but unfortunately it can be a little too easy to link combos together which can make it very hard on the person defending. Ultimately fights become shallow affairs, resulting in the use of blocks until a weakness has been exposed in your opponentsâ attacks.
The twelve different characters cover a variety of appearances, however they can all be pigeonholed into the fighting stereotype that weâve all come to expect; large cumbersome fighters, quick footed yet weak fighters, etc, etc⦠Unfortunately the fighting system doesnât give any sense of unique fighting styles between the different characters, once youâve figured out a few of the basic combos they can virtually all be applied to every other character â“ tsk, tsk!!!
One other nuisance that caused us great amounts of frustration is the way that the camera would flip without warning; one moment youâre fighting quite happily on the left side and in the blink of an eye youâll find yourself on the right!
Whilst the actual game is relatively hit-and-miss the gameâs visuals are certainly no disappointment. Characters and environments have that sharp, crisp look that weâve come to love on the Xbox, whilst the texture works sports an insane amount of detail. Character animation on the whole is adequate, although the lack of definition in fighting styles once again comes to the front as weâre treated to virtually the same animations time and time again.
