Published 17th of August 2003

Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus promises much for the XBox, coming from the co-creator of Mortal Kombat. Does it deliver?

Platform: Microsoft XBox Developer: Studio Gigante Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Released: March 2003

SCREENSHOTS What do these ratings mean?

Admittedly, the Xbox hasn’t had its fair share of good exclusive fighting titles in the past. With the exception of Dead or Alive 3 which could almost be considered a launch title for the console, the area of exclusive fighters for Microsoft’s next-gen system has been a huge void. It’s been a long time since the system has had a decent exclusive fighting game. Microsoft seem to be taking this problem into their own hands now and attempting to fill that void with some first party software. After the release of Mortal Kombat Gold on the Sega Dreamcast, John Tobias, who was one of the co-founders of Mortal Kombat alongside Ed Boon, left Midway along with some of the guys there and started his own venture, Studio Gigante, which is now coincidentally a first party developer for the Xbox. While Ed Boon and the team left at Midway got to work on Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, John Tobias and his newly formed Studio Gigante started their work on Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus. It’s the first fighting game off Microsoft’s production line that seems to have the ability to fill that huge void known as the exclusive fighting title market on the Xbox, so how does it fair?

When it boils down to it, it’s easy to see where the very basic gameplay elements have come from, as at a very basic level, the gameplay is somewhat similar to previous titles in the Mortal Kombat series before Deadly Alliance. Similar that is, in the fact that every character has the same basic moves. There’s four main attack buttons, where the top two buttons (Y and B) execute a lead and trailing punch, respectively, and where the bottom two buttons (X and A) execute a lead and trailing kick respectively. Pressing a direction at the same time as one of these buttons executes a slightly different punch or kick. However, that’s about where the similarities to past Mortal Kombat games end. For a start, the game uses the direction-back Street Fighter style blocking system rather than using a block button, pressing both the punch buttons together executes a throw, and the characters don’t have any MK style special moves. The black button taunts, and the white button performs your character’s special Chi attack (more on that later). Holding the R trigger and pressing a certain direction allows you to attack off objects in the arena. Like MK: DA though, the game completely ignores the analogue stick and instead forces players to use the digital pad. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, and in fact you probably won’t have much of a hope in playing the game well if you had the option of using the analogue stick anyway.

As previously noted, the characters don’t possess any special moves, per se. What differentiates the characters and their fighting styles is in fact their combos. By stringing together multiple punches and kicks, as is the case in other fighting games, your character will perform pre-defined combos which make up the character’s movesets. The combo engine is pretty big and complex and when you first see the moves list it may be a little difficult to get your mind around it all, but after trying it out you’ll find that it’s not really all that mind boggling, with little more than good timing required in between the button presses to land most combos. Each character possesses a large number of predefined combos, some designed to inflict quick hits while others slower but more powerful hits. This unfortunately takes away from the gaming experience as a whole however, because you know that your opponent is probably going to attempt a combo on you so you can be ready for the attack unless they have their Chi meter filled. The combos however do offer a decent variety of high/low mixups to constantly keep your opponents guessing, and in addition to this each character also has two alternate stances that you can use to inflict different types of punches, kicks or combos. The usefulness of attempting to use these alternate stances in the middle of a tough fight though is debatable, but if you can use them they a beneficial because you can build up your Chi meter faster.

The game also takes an interesting approach to how a winner is determined. By default, the game uses a Killer Instinct style of health depletion. That is, inflict enough damage on your opponent to knock them down, and they’ll get up with a full health meter but yours will not be replenished. The first player to knock their opponent down three times is the winner. However, there is an option provided to use the traditional rounds system where it’s the best of a predetermined number of rounds and works the same way as any other fighting game. The fact that they have provided both methods is a nice touch, although you’ll most likely use the default system most often.

As each hit makes contact, whether it’s blocked or not, you build up a Chi meter which is displayed as a blue gauge underneath your character’s lifebar. Once this Chi meter is filled, you can press the white button or a direction along with the white button to perform one of your character’s three Chi attacks. These can be defined as special moves I guess, but the fact that you don’t really get to use them all that often sort of voids that theory. These Chi attacks are usually pretty powerful and can be anything from a ball of energy to a teleportation attack. They are all unblockable, but there is a short delay before any of them are performed and an alert player can use this opportunity to land a quick blow to their opponent which not only cancels their Chi attack but also depletes their Chi meter. In addition to this feature, the game also provides some interesting new gameplay elements. One new concept is limb damage, and this really weens out the turtlers who just like to stand and block all day. If you block a number of attacks in a row, you’ll be given a “Limb Damage Alert” which is essentially just a warning. Block a few more attacks though, especially some strong ones, and you’ll be given a “Limb Damage Warning” which can be trouble. The next big knock you take, whether you block it or not will result in your character falling to the ground with a damaged arm or leg, depending on whether the final hit was high or low. Once your character has damaged arms or legs, their punches or kicks (depending on what is damaged) will inflict 50% less damage on your opponent than they otherwise would, which can be a big disadvantage. It’s not the end of the world though, because if your Chi meter is filled, you can use it to heal a damaged limb by pressing the L trigger. This does deplete the Chi meter though so you won’t be able to perform a Chi attack unless you build it up again, but at least your punches or kicks will be back to their full strength. An interesting point to note, however, is that you can have either your arms or legs damaged, but not both at the same time. If you already have a damaged limb, you can stand and block all day and you won’t receive another limb damage warning unless you heal the damaged limb. But you do have the disadvantage that your attacks will inflict significantly less damage. Another new feature is the fact that you can attack off objects in the arena or off walls. By pressing the R trigger along with a direction, you can grab hold of a pole and swing yourself around, or leap off the wall or other object in the arena to land a blow on your opponent. These attacks are very strong and inflict pretty heavy damage, and with the exception of Chi attacks, are the only attacks in the game that deplete your opponent’s health if blocked. They ARE blockable, (unlike Chi attacks) but even if blocked they still cause a little damage. If any other attack is blocked, it causes no damage at all. These extra features do add some much needed variety and unpredictability to the gameplay, but as a whole the fighting engine still seems rather shallow as a result of the characters lacking any distinct special moves.

The graphics, as you would expect from an Xbox exclusive title, are very good and look very polished as a whole. Each character is modelled very well and they look very lifelike, down to their facial animations and perfect lip syncing when the characters a speaking. During the fight they show realistic body damage as cuts and bruises appear on their faces and bodies, as well as tears and rips in their clothing. As you probably would have guessed, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (being the brainchild of John Tobias) features splattering blood to some extent. It’s nothing like what you see in the Mortal Kombat games though and in fact it’s hardly a concern. The odd little splat comes out after a successful hit but disappears pretty quickly when it hits the ground. Anyone looking for another gore fest with fatalities and so on will be disappointed here, but the game doesn’t suffer because it lacks these things (even though they would have been a nice addition). The arenas are also excellently presented and are detailed very nicely. You’ll be fighting in places like an arcade game building, complete with authentic looking arcade machines, and in the lobby of a museum, complete with specimen display cabinets. The mentioned special little nuances can also be interacted with, as they smash and break when you slam your opponent into them after a strong hit. This adds nothing to the gameplay really (except for the fact that you may get a limb damage warning if you get smashed into these objects) but it does look pretty cool. The graphics engine, despite how great it is, isn’t perfect however as there are some collision detection problems occasionally, and an odd occasion where a part of a character may stick through a wall for a brief moment, but nothing that’s all that serious. In fact if you aren’t looking for these things, you probably won’t even notice them.

Unfortunately the camera can become a bit of a problem. Rather than making a large foreground object transparent if it gets in the way of the camera, the camera actually swings around so it’s not in the way anymore. While this may seem like a good idea, it’s not. When the camera swings around, it completely reverses the sides the players are standing on. If you are on the right, you’ll end up on the left and vice versa. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the game didn’t use the ‘hold back’ system of blocking. What you’ll find happening more often than you’d like is that you’d be blocking an attack, and the camera suddenly swings around. Since you’ve reversed the side your standing on, you’re no longer holding back to block, but walking forward into your opponent to get the full force of their attack into your face. It’s an offensive problem as much as it is a defensive problem too. Particularly when executing the big combos, you need to press a direction along with a button to pull off some of the hits. Of course, when the camera swings around in mid-combo, your forwards become backs and vice versa and you’ll find yourself not being able to land the full combo. Since the game relies so much on the ‘counter and combo’ style of gameplay, the camera makes what may have been a good idea into a very frustrating one. It can swing multiple times in a few seconds too which can really disorientate you. You’ll find that the camera swinging will cost you many matches, particularly against a computer opponent who doesn’t seem bothered by the constant switching of sides.

The sound is also pretty good. Each character has their own distinct voice, and all the grunts and groans are all present as you’d expect them to be. The sound that’s created when a character is slammed into the wall or window is pretty authentic and you are tempted to just look back and see the damage you just caused. The music unfortunately is a little lacking in variety and as a whole isn’t really anything special. Most of the time you won’t even notice it’s there…and sometimes it’s not...there’s an odd glitch that seemingly prevents music playback sometimes.

It’s obvious though that a lot of thought went into the game’s story. With Tobias on the team lead (who wrote the majority the story for the first four Mortal Kombat games) you’d sort of expect that, but don’t expect inter-dimensional travel and four-armed dragons. There still is an element of myth about it though, and the story revolves around a fictional city named Metro China and two rival sects within the city, the Pale Lotus (the good guys) and the Black Mantis (the bad guys). Each of the game’s twelve main characters belong to one of these sects. As you play through the game’s quest mode, you’ll follow either the noble path of the Pale Lotus or the evil path of the Black Mantis on their quest to find the old dude that holds the secret of immortality and you’ll learn more about the characters as you play through it, finding out the back stories between them. I won’t spoil anything for you but needless to say it all ties together pretty well, although it is somewhat disappointing that Studio Gigante couldn’t come up with some more characters. Twelve (with one extra that can be unlocked) just didn’t seem like enough.

The game offers quite a number of play modes too. The quest mode of course is the main single player feature, and you also have your standard survival and versus modes. Added to the mix are a team battle and tournament mode which make the game interesting, and a training mode which is actually a fresh new way of approaching it. There’s two ways you can train, standard training, where you look up the moves and attempt to perform them yourself, or advanced training where you are given a number of set tasks to achieve. In either mode, you can select for a demo to be shown of the move before trying it out yourself so you know exactly when to hit the buttons and what the actions of hitting them are. Either mode is very helpful to learning the game mechanics. There is, however, the problem of replay value. The Quest mode probably won’t take you all that long to finish once you know how to play well enough, and there’s only one extra character and one extra battleground to unlock. Multiplayer adds a bit more variety with the Team Battle and Tournament modes thrown in and these work pretty well against a human player, although their fun factor against the computer isn’t really that high. As was the case with Dead or Alive 3, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus unfortunately doesn’t give you a lot of reasons to keep coming back to it. With more unlockable stuff and maybe some extra play modes to choose from it would have been much better. As it stands the lastability relies on how long it takes you and your friends to get bored of the multiplayer modes.

As a whole, Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus is a good game that could have been so much more. With a more refined fighting engine, a better selection of music, a more consistent camera, more characters to choose from and more features to unlock, this really would have been a showcase game for the Xbox. It is however good enough to fill the big hole of Xbox exclusive fighting titles at the moment so it’s at least worth checking out for that reason. After a few hours of playing though, you’ll probably find the game to be a bit too shallow in comparison with the mainstream cross-platform fighters.

How the game scores (out of 10)

Graphics: 9

The graphics look extremely good and you’d expect nothing less from an Xbox exclusive title. Both the characters and battlegrounds are presented very well, and the body damage and arena damage are nice touches.

Sound: 7

The effects are all there and all work well, but the music is somewhat disappointing and really lacks that impact that’s needed in a fighting game to get the adrenaline pumping.

Gameplay: 7

The game possesses a large and well thought out combo system, but that’s about as far as it goes. Disappointingly, apart from the Chi attacks, the characters lack any real special moves and this shows with the predictability in gameplay. The game engine simply lacks any real variety. The wall/pole attacks and the limb damage features help a little but not enough to really give the game that edge it needs. And unfortunately the camera system can really get annoying and detracts from the gameplay experience too.

Lastability: 6.5

There’s one extra character and one extra battleground to unlock, and that’s about it. The main replay experience comes from multiplayer, and there is enough variety in the multiplayer modes to keep you entertained for a while at least. But in the end, there isn’t a lot to offer.

Overall (not an average): 7

It’s always disappointing when you see a game that looks and plays well enough but hasn’t had the attention it needed in the areas that count to make it truly stand out. Unfortunately Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus fits this category. Take a look at it if you’re interested in checking out something different, but don’t expect to be still playing it in a few months time.

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