Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic Review

hhhuuuuaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!! *Martial Arts sound*

Rag Doll Kung Fu was originally a PC game developed by Mark Healey during his tenure at Lion head Studios, before moving on to create Media Molecule and Little Big Planet.  Now a new version of this game has been released for the Playstation Network.  Do these fists of plastic pack a powerful punch?

The short version is ehhhh….not really.  I should begin with the good before ripping the game a new one so shall we?  Rag Doll plays with a 1-4 players controlling mix and match doll parts that fight each other.  The game is very physics heavy and it is all about flying around the screen and this works.  The controls work well and surprisingly uses the motion control in smart interesting ways that work pretty well.

The game has a local multiplayer & a challenge mode.  The challenge modes hosts about 10 challenges or so that serve to train your skills and help to make you a better fighter.  The bare minimum of achieving a bronze fist for each challenge will take twenty minutes to finish all of them, maybe less.

Now comes the ripping, I used the word local multiplayer before because it only has local multiplayer.  This game is SCREAMING for online multiplayer and without it, it falls extremely short of where it could have been.  There is no single player experience other than the extremely short challenges which don’t last very long.

This is going to be an incredibly short review for an incredible short game.  It has all the ingredients to be a good game, a nice presentation, & good gameplay, but the lack of online multiplayer is its death bed. With no single player experience the game will last barely half an hour, however it will make a good game to play when people are over, but with no redeeming single player or online offerings its extremely hard to recommend. It is currently free from May 14th-May 21st so pick it up, but once it costs money again don’t bother.

Decent