Despite the fact it’s out this week, RPS has given the game version of Kung Fu Panda surprisingly little coverage. When a major part of RPS’ mission is to give you blow by blow coverage of the latest movie-to-videogame licences, it’s a major oversight. We failed you, and we failed Kung fu Panda and we failed Jack Black. Our journalistic penises are flaccid. Weak. We try to make ammends by showing the launch-trailer, which you’ll find beneath the cut…
It’s not quite enough, is it? Nothing can remove the stain of failure from us. It’s going to be Seppuku all around at RPS towers. This is the end of the site. Farewell, cruel world. We tried, but it wasn’t enough.
Even worse, I didn’t know the movie even existed.
Despite the promising trailer, movie to game, er, games always suck anyway. Sorry. S’true. Fact of life. Reveals them for the soulless cash-ins that they are.
I wouldn’t say “soulless cash-ins”, more like the developers rarely have enough time to do justice to the property. Most films only take a year from green light to cinema, whereas most games take 2 years. The games usually have a delayed start as they need to be sure about characters, sets, plot, etc and that can change quite late in the film schedule. I just wish developers would be allowed to make a well realised smaller game, something where they did have enough time to make sure it was fun. There’s a lot of pressure put on developers by publisher and film maker to make the game looks as good as the movie and follow the plot of the movie closely – this is where things start to go wrong.
Considering Joe Public tends to avoid original IP like the plague it’s understandable to want to launch a game IP off the back of $5million worth of film IP advertising and development. Maybe if Joe Public put a little effort into his game purchases and wasn’t such a sheep then publishers could invest in original IP a bit more. Shame on you Joe Public!!
A flaccid RPeniS… not what I was expecting from the title.
I’m still laughing at the tag! Me and a colleague agree that Pandas are clearly not meant for this earth…
I mean, no matter how hard conservationists and the Chinese try, does anyone else get the distinct feeling that evolution and/or natural selection just doesn’t want black and white bears to exist!
@ Albedies: Tell that to Goldeneye 64
And Riddick, which someone always mentions in movie to game suckage discussions.
And The Warriors.
13 levels!
I love meaningless numbers in trailers.
This is a game for Samwise “Huge Panda-freak” Didier of Blizzard, obviously. Anyway, how can this suck? It has Jack Black in it! And Angelina Jolie! Woohoo!
Also, from what I understand, the first two Spider-man movie-games were good. (As opposed to the third.)
We wouldn’t know, having only ever recieved the third on our platform :(
The second was good, the first was a bit balls. I only played the third on Wii and was just pleasantly surprised with the controls. I didn’t think the rest of it was much worse than Spidey 2 game, in spite of the bloody awful draw distances which, even on Wii, could have been better.
@Optimaximal: They don’t seem to care much about their own impending extinction either.
“Hey sweetheart, fancy a bit? Save the species and all that.”
“Ehhh…. can’t really be bothered.”
“Thank Christ, I don’t have the energy either. Bamboo cane?”
“Now you’re talking!”
Don’t panda to the masses. Fung ku.
Also, from what I understand, the first two Spider-man movie-games were good. (As opposed to the third.)
I think that was only a coincidence, because the game were based on the previous concept developed by Neversoft for previous spiderman titles based just on the comicbook license.
Then, they screwed up with the third title for some reason. What do you expect? they are Treyarch, they develop the titles nobody else wants to do.
titles like call of duty?
titles like the THIRD Call of Duty.
I actually quite enjoyed the single player campaign of Call of Duty 3, whereas I didn’t like number 4 very much at all. Not sure what that says about my taste in games, but I think that 3 gets quite an unfair drubbing none the less.
This reminded me of another animal themed kung fu game: T’ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger for the Playstation.
was that the one with a warrior called DHALI LLAMA?
This is very rarely true for films with actors, and never for animated films. Most Pixar animated films have taken seven years from concept to finished product (They came up with the idea for WallE at the same time as Toy Story).
King Kong was pretty good too, well at least I liked it anyway. Certainly the best first person spear-em-up at any rate.
“Kung Fu Panda” ? ::yawn::
Played the demo of this. “Piece of crap” would be a compliment.
I find the animation quality shown on this trailer really smooth and natural. It at least seems technically quite good for a film adaptation.
Mehhh
So they reskinned Tai Fu and made used a movie license for it?
(I actually really liked that old game (especially the designs), if anyone else remember it. I also remember getting really good at it.)
Yeah, yeah, besides Ridick, Goldeneye 64, King Kong, Spiderman and I’ll even throw in the Blues Brothers SNES game, if I were to try and count the many shitty movie games on my hands, I would need more hands.
And don’t some brilliant pedant bring up sturgeon’s law either or I will curse at them under my breath.
Oh there are certainly far more awful ones. Just look at Ocean’s catalogue.
“I mean, no matter how hard conservationists and the Chinese try, does anyone else get the distinct feeling that evolution and/or natural selection just doesn’t want black and white bears to exist!”
Yes and no. Pandas live in a very specialised niche, as pretty much the only large animal that eats bamboo. As long as there’s lots of it around, as there was for all of its evolutionary history until China’s population exploded, it was a good niche with no competition. The problem is that bamboo’s not very nutritious, so they have to eat lots of it, and they can’t eat much else. So when their habitat comes under pressure, pandas are very vulnerable. That doesn’t make them very different to other highly specialised organisms – it’s just that they’re cute and don’t fare well in captivity, so they get all the attention.
123 abc?what.