Following the film’s plot, gamers play as all four main characters (Jen, Lo, Li Mu Bai, and Shu Lien), battling enemies with martial arts moves while jumping around on rooftops. You’ll often spot limbs and objects poking through solid surfaces, but you’ll almost never see your opponent properly framed—the camera angles are simply dreadful and rarely offer a decent view of the combat (or even the immediate surroundings). It’s nice that the character dialogue is in Chinese and subtitled in English (authentic to the film’s origins), but bad guys bleat like terminally ill sheep, and there’s only one or two sound files for each action. Uncomfortable controls (Jump is on R1? Action is on L3?) feel counterintuitive (at least they can be reconfigured), and the special moves system consists of little more than pressing every button on the controller in a slightly different pattern. That’s almost as annoying as the old-school inclusion of continues, which increases the frustration factor, not the challenge. The movie offered so much style and grace, but even with its nifty floating moves and wall jumps, the game is ultimately yang to the film’s yin—a total opposite in almost every embarrassing regard. Chalk up another victim of the licensed-movie-game curse and skip this toothless Tiger.
