By Kieron Gillen on June 4th, 2008 at 1:17 pm.
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.
04/06/2008 at 13:29 Albides says:
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.
04/06/2008 at 13:58 Poo Bear says:
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!!
04/06/2008 at 14:23 Ben Abraham says:
A flaccid RPeniS… not what I was expecting from the title.
04/06/2008 at 14:50 Optimaximal says:
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!
04/06/2008 at 14:54 Joe says:
@ Albedies: Tell that to Goldeneye 64
04/06/2008 at 14:58 Nick says:
And Riddick, which someone always mentions in movie to game suckage discussions.
04/06/2008 at 15:07 Lucky Main Street says:
And The Warriors.
04/06/2008 at 15:16 Lu-Tze says:
13 levels!
I love meaningless numbers in trailers.
04/06/2008 at 15:18 Frans Coehoorn says:
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!
04/06/2008 at 15:22 PleasingFungus says:
Also, from what I understand, the first two Spider-man movie-games were good. (As opposed to the third.)
04/06/2008 at 15:28 Optimaximal says:
We wouldn’t know, having only ever recieved the third on our platform :(
04/06/2008 at 15:31 Ian says:
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!”
04/06/2008 at 15:33 Gap Gen says:
Don’t panda to the masses. Fung ku.
04/06/2008 at 15:35 darkripper says:
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.
04/06/2008 at 16:13 Lunaran says:
titles like call of duty?
04/06/2008 at 16:58 darkripper says:
titles like the THIRD Call of Duty.
04/06/2008 at 17:30 Chaz says:
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.
04/06/2008 at 17:38 Mika says:
This reminded me of another animal themed kung fu game: T’ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger for the Playstation.
04/06/2008 at 18:05 darkripper says:
was that the one with a warrior called DHALI LLAMA?
04/06/2008 at 18:10 Leeks! says:
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).
04/06/2008 at 18:39 Man Raised By Puffins says:
King Kong was pretty good too, well at least I liked it anyway. Certainly the best first person spear-em-up at any rate.
04/06/2008 at 19:23 MindBrain says:
“Kung Fu Panda” ? ::yawn::
04/06/2008 at 19:41 Pemptus says:
Played the demo of this. “Piece of crap” would be a compliment.
04/06/2008 at 19:47 DragonSix says:
I find the animation quality shown on this trailer really smooth and natural. It at least seems technically quite good for a film adaptation.
04/06/2008 at 19:59 Max says:
Mehhh
04/06/2008 at 20:26 Solario says:
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.)
04/06/2008 at 23:33 Albides says:
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.
04/06/2008 at 23:37 Nick says:
Oh there are certainly far more awful ones. Just look at Ocean’s catalogue.
05/06/2008 at 18:07 Ginger Yellow says:
“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.
19/06/2008 at 08:32 miss says:
123 abc?what.