Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus

King of the blockers, John Gillooly, meets his new nemesis.

There are tried and true formulas for console success, reflected beautifully in the range of launch titles that Xbox had. You need a good driving game, decent platform action, maybe some wacko RPG fun and a solid fighting game. Dead or Alive 3 was the launch fighting title for Xbox and very little has happened in the genre since then.

It is therefore unsurprising that Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus has been surrounded in so much hype. Spawned from the mind of John Tobias, co-creator of Mortal Kombat, Tao Feng promises a few significant additions to the genre while not straying too far from convention.

Fighting game plots usually make as much sense as arming a crack fighting force with sharpened cucumbers; they are certainly good for a chuckle but quickly become just plain absurd. Tao Feng has a certain mystery built around it, with two clans (The Pale Lotus and the Black Mantis) going toe-to-toe to unlock the secrets of immortality. Or maybe they are battling for the right to host the next meeting of ‘Freaky-Looking Fighting Game Characters Anonymous’. Because the story is told through scrolling text during Quest mode it strangely ends up being skipped in the pursuit of arse-kicking.

This Quest mode is what you need to undertake to unlock the sole extra character in Tao Feng. And to do that you need to battle everyone with everyone else. Seeing that there are six fighters per clan, this means a total of 72 fights before you even get near unlocking the extra character. Considering the wealth of choice found in most fighting games these days, one cannot help but feel under-whelmed by the incentives given to finish Quest mode.

Actual combat in Tao Feng differs from the pack in several highly significant ways. The most instantly noticeable is that the tried and true round based game is gone. Tao Feng has no rounds or time limits. Each fighter has three health bars, which are worn down during battle. Once the first bar runs out your fighter falls to the ground, a short scripted scene plays and then the fighter is back on their feet and the battle continues. Neither player gains any extra health when this happens, the battle just continues until all three health bars of one player are depleted.

This makes for fights that are much more tactical than round based ones, especially when compared with the other prominent feature of this game -- limb damage. In order to negate blocking-fetishists, Tao Feng includes the potential for limb damage. Get hit on the arms or legs too many times and you will get a limb damage warning, get hit more and you will have a bright red danger warning flashing, get hit again and you could suffer limb damage. Damaged arms deliver 50% less damage; injure your legs and not only is damage reduced, you will also move slower. This encourages a more dynamic, aggressive fighting style and is enhanced by the inclusion of ‘Chi’.

As your blows connect to either the unprotected parts of your opponent or even their blocks you generate a small amount of Chi, which is shown in a bar at the top of the screen. When the bar fills up you can either unleash a super-destructive Chi attack or use it to repair your damaged limbs.

This fairly brutal fighting style falls over through the incredibly newbie-unfriendly use of combos. Besides the all-too common two or three button combos, Tao Feng is laden with tendon-destroying combos running into 10 or more presses. This of course means that the semblance of equality between seasoned ‘Fengers’ and newbies is nonexistent.

As a newbie, be prepared to be drilled over and over again until you start nailing the combos. This is fun, but it makes for a game that involves serious dedication rather than being one that is easy to pick up and play for those long controller-swapping sessions on the couch.

Graphically, Tao Feng does not have the ooh-ah factor of Dead or Alive 3, but it does have very detailed interactive environments that are rendered beautifully by the Xbox.

Character animation and modelling is also outstanding, made even more special by the damage modelling. As your character is pummelled and thrown about the level it develops cuts, bruises and tattered clothing. By the end of a fight both combatants will actually look like they’ve had the shit beaten out of them, rather than happily prancing about looking like they just stepped out of the local dry cleaners.

Tao Feng is a solid addition to the beat-em up genre that adds a swag of new features to spice up the experience, and looks good to boot. But all the looks and features in the world cannot hide the fact that this is a brutally difficult game to get into, and ultimately lacks that special something that has you reaching for the controller to show your flatmates that you continue to rule the roost months after you first started playing it.