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   Company Hudson Soft ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - June 25, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600  Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo |
They
say if you don't have anything nice to say about something, don't say
anything at all. If that held true, then this would be one of the
shortest reviews in history. China Warrior became best known for its
use of overly large character sprites, which at the time was a big
deal, but by today's standards isn't very impressive. Once you take
away that one redeeming quality, what you're left with is a terribly
mediocre game that just isn't very much fun to play. Now Hudson has
decided to give China Warrior a home on the Wii Virtual Console, and as
bad as this game was 15 years ago, it just seems to have gotten even
worse over time.
I noticed that even Hudson's Virtual Console page couldn't come up with much in the way of storyline for China Warrior so I won't waste much time and space trying to fill in the blanks. The evil Dark Emperor is trying to take over the country and you must stop him with your arsenal of kung-fu attacks. If you think it sounds boring now, wait until you play the game. From looking at the screenshots, you'd probably expect a game similar in style to Kung-Fu Master. While China Warrior does attempt to mimic that style of play using it's huge character sprites, the result is a sluggish game play experience that might look good, but doesn't play very well. You basically walk through each level punching and kicking the many enemies and projectiles that come your way. This might seem like fun, but the game's snail pace makes it more of a lesson in futility than an enjoyable game play experience. You're pretty much limited to the basic kick and punch attacks, so don't expect much more than that in the way of variety. At the end of each level you'll square off against a boss that turns the game into a quest to see who can mash their punch or kick button the fastest. There's little more than that as far as strategy goes with these sluggish boss fights. Occasionally you'll also get to play a bonus round where you'll be required to time your attack with a strength meter in order to break a giant urn, but it's more of an after-thought than anything that will add the least bit of enjoyment to what is an otherwise drab and uninspired game play experience. When China Warrior was first released, it garnered a lot of attention due to its use of such large character and enemy sprites. Of course once people played the game, they could pretty much care less what it looked like since it didn't play very well. It's still worth noting that each character sprite does show a great amount of detail and despite only using a few frames of animation, they all move fairly realistically as well. The backgrounds also show a nice touch of detail and there is a lot of variety in the color usage. It's a shame that the game looks so good yet plays so horribly. The music in China Warrior is actually not too shabby. The tracks are a little on the short side, and can become repetitive after long playing sessions, but there are some really good tracks, especially considering that this isn't a CD title. The sound effects are where the game could have used a little work as most of the sound effects can barely be heard at all, and those that can be heard are not very well done. It's yet another flaw that just adds to the low quality feel of the game. I could spend three pages listing all of the bad qualities of China Warrior but I'm not going to do that. Unless you're just one of those few people that actually liked this game back when it was new, you'd be better off saving your Wii Points for next week. At least we can take comfort in the knowledge that Hudson most likely can't release anything worse than this one. China Warrior had a lot of potential, but it's a shining example that no matter how flashy and impressive a game is visually, if it doesn't have the game play to back it up, it's not going to be any good. China Warrior will always have the distinction of being one of the all-time great stinkers of the TurboGrafx-16 system. And rest assured, it comes by that distinction honestly. |
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