Wu-ha! Got you all in check!

A lot of games have tried the ride to profit on their campiness. The Simpsons arcade game was a good example. It took a popular quarter-muncher, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and swapped up the graphics with the Simpsons, who were ragingly popular at that point. It worked pretty well. Shaq Fu on the other hand...that didn't work quite so well. (Big Fella...stick to beatin' down lesser threats like Ostertag and that crybaby Sabonis.) The latest attempt at marketable stars trying to bust into the video game world involves the culturally confused Wu-Tang Clan. Apparently, after many installments of Black Belt Theater while they were growing up, the New York based group decided they were martial artists who were taught the secrets of the Shaolin masters. Well, at least they have pretty good music. (And I find them far less culturally offensive than I do those whack-ass Sprite commercials.)

Just like all those great Asian exploitation kung-fu movies of the 70's and 80's, the Wu-Tang Clan start the story out having to get back their master, who has been captured by another, more evil master. The evil master, of course, wants something your master won't give him (this time, it's the secrets of the Wu-Tang Stylz.) and you gotta get to him before he meets an untimely end. Along the way you'll team up with other members of the Klan. RZA, U-God, Masta Killa, and Raekwon are all ready to lay the smack down.

Due to its "ultra-violent" nature, Wu-Tang Shaolin Style comes with a parental lock-out code. If you don't enter it you don't get to see the fatalities, the dismemberment, or any of the blood. Personally, I didn't think this game was ultraviolent. I haven't seen pseudo-violence this deliberately cheezy since Shogo. It's still a nifty touch to the game, but if you're looking for something graphic, you're really going to have to look elsewhere. Fatalities are easy to perform. Beat someone. The last hit will be your chacter's default fatality. The screen will whirl around, pausing just before the fatal hit strikes, a la The Matrix. Then your character will go into his fatality, which invovles a lot of breaking body parts and fake blood. To unlock other fatalities, play in Story Mode, and complete the tasks that the 36 chambers demand of you. Why 36? I don't really know. Ancient Chinese history. That, and the Wu-Tang is really into numbers. (36 is 6 squared. 6 upside down is 9, and the square root of 9 is 3. 3 plus 3 is 6, and 3 plus 6 is 9, so, 36, as a number is kinda nifty.)

Most of the time in Wu-Tang, you aren't going to have a fair fight. That just the way it is in the Black Belt Theater movies. So, you're going to have to be prepared to fend off 2, maybe even 3 cheesy opponents. Blocking almost becomes irrelevant, because, in a 3D fighting game, you can't block all directions all the time. Figuring out how to clear out people will become essential to your passing on in the game. Eventually after working your way past all of the minions, you'll fight the boss as the criteria for unlocking the 36th chamber.

Wu-Tang Shaolin Style isn't a perfect game. Far from it in fact. Not that it sucks, it's pretty fun, but it just doesn't have the fighting engine down well enough to stand on its own. If you aren't a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan, you aren't going to be raving about this game, except for the cheese. The characters aren't that well textured, and a lot of the moves will repeat. Fighting 3 cheezy characters gets EXTREMELY tedious after time, especially since they'll all attack you at once. Also, the music gets old fairly quick, there only being 3 Wu-Tang songs in the whole game, and you hear them all pretty quickly. Also, what's up with the freakishly large hands on everyone in this game? In addition, some of the chambers are exceedingly hard to pull of with some characters. Not only do you have to find a 10-hit combo for all of the characters, but you have to get EXACTLY 6, 7, and 8 hit combos, too. Some characters don't really have combos that length that are possible to pull off unless you spend an inordinate amount of time trying.

All the characters are pretty well-modeled, movement-wise. Some of the moves are very fluid, and look straight out of some Hong Kong flick. Some moves, like Method Man's "Ride The Pony" move, are straight outta the minds of the band. (I coulda sworn that move would have been the Ol' Dirty Bastard's...) The smoothness of the game's attacks is very nice, and the moves are less herky-jerky than one would expect from a game as replete with campiness at this one.

This is one you should pick up if you dig the Wu-Tang Clan, and are a gamer. It's not the best fighting game, it's somewhere on the Ehrgeiz level of quality. If you dig the Wu-Tang Clan, though, you'll enjoy this just for more background on the rappers, and to see them in all of the kung-fu glory that they think they have. In addition, instead of just your standard one-on-one beat down, Wu-Tang offers something new to the console fighting game...4 player fighting. Fighting in a big mob is kinda fun, except for the fact that you run out of screen space. But, an interesting idea, and one that other game companies should definitely start looking into.