XBox 360 - Kung Fu Panda (Activision)

[Rob]

Yes this game is old. Yes this game is a kids game. Yes this game is a movie IP transferred to games.

So what?

My nephew LOVES Kung Fu Panda. I've been forced to play through this game three times now and I still enjoy it. It's a button masher. It's violent but in a funny, cartoon way; and it's a truncated telling of the much more (from a plot perspective) satisfying movie. But it's fun.

My sister's family got this game free with thier XBox 360. I didn't think much of it (I had not seen the movie) as it looked like a silly, unchallenging button masher. But when family members got stuck on certain levels and asked "the gamer" to help them along I found out something I had forgotten.

Not every game has to be mind numbingly impossible to beat to be fun. The first time I played Halo 3 I played it on the hardest setting and it took me just over twenty four hours of nearly continuous play to beat the game. It took me weeks of playing here and there to get through Call of Duty: World at War on the hardest level.

Kung Fu Panda can be beaten, by most able gamers, in about four hours.

If you want to be a completist and get the gamer points a outfits it may take a bit longer. But it's never boring. The game is too easy to be boring. The scenery is always changing.

In my most recent run through I spent all my money on the "Dragon Warrior" outfit and didn't upgrade my skills at all; and I still easily beat the game.

I wouldn't want every game to be as simple and easy as Kung Fu Panda. But the story is interesting, the characters are well developed (all the cast members voice thier characters for the game) and the kid loves it. Every time he runs up and grabs my finger and tells me I'm in the "Wushu finger hold" I get a smile out of it.

Like any shared experience this game is dramatically improved by the bonding I do with my nephew. But if you have a little boy who might like the idea of martial arts (my nephew recently started lessons) and enjoys a good cartoon scuffle this is the kind of game you can really enjoy playing together.