A fun party fighter with mini-game challenges tossed in, but lacking a much-needed online mode.
When I first sat down to play Rag Doll Kung Fu, I thought of it as a fairly competent Smash Bros. clone, and I suppose on the surface that's what it'll look like to just about everyone. There are four player battles on small playing fields with different objects tossed in at random intervals, along with small platforms to allow multi-level fisticuffs. There's no permanent death, and the winner is determined by whoever has the most "kills" before the time runs out. So yeah, comparing it to Smash Bros. isn't really much of a stretch.
I was surprised to find though, that the more I played of RDKF, the more I learned to enjoy it as it's own title, and not as a Smash Bros. homage/clone or whatever you'd like to call it. The game itself looks pretty nice on the PS3, with a physics model and design aesthetic that's pretty reminiscent of Little Big Planet, in that your characters have little quirks and independent movements based on how you propel them across the screen, hang off of objects, or in how they react to being pushed around, punched, and tossed through the air. It really feels like a high level LBP project with a different set of tools, and I totally mean that in a good way. Of course, this makes sense considering that Mark Healy was the original creator of the PC version of RDKF, and then went on to help form Media Molecule, the development team behind LBP in the first place.
However, it's not just a brawler, even though the fighting aspect obviously plays a pretty large role. There are a series of challenges in the game, which you can look at as the single player mode, wherein you compete against the clock in an effort to score a bronze, silver, or gold fist award, which in turn unlocks extra content in the game. The challenges themselves are pretty varied, with one requiring you to flip around from platform to platform simply by hanging off of them, and if you happen to land on your feet you'll lose your multiplier, so the goal is to always hang by your hands and never actually land, which is trickier than it sounds. There's another that equips you with throwing stars and tosses various destructible objects your way, and you use the throw attack to destroy the objects before they hit the ground in an effort to rack up a high score and get the best award. There's a king of the hill mode that designates a certain platform as "the hill" and if you're the only one standing on it you'll start to see your score rise, but there will be AI opponents that constantly try to knock you off of the hill and keep you from scoring within the time limit. This is just a sample of the challenge modes, and really, they're a lot of fun, while at the same time teaching you the basic mechanics of the game that will actually help you out when you go into the battle royale stuff.
The actual fighting game aspect of it is fun, but I do think it's severely limited by being an offline fighter, especially on the PSN platform. I'm not sure what difficulties the design team had in putting the game together, or the time restraints involved, but not having online in a four player game offered on a download service feels off, and I think it'll have a hard time finding a large audience without it. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with the offline mode, if you can get a group of friends to play locally than it'll be a blast in the same vein as other party fighters, but that's not going to be an option for everyone. The challenges help to add some replay value to the game, my initial run resulted in mostly silver fists, so going back for the gold will take some skill refinement on my part, and considering that they're over in 3 minutes or so it's a game that's really easy to replay and jump into, which is nice if you're not able to devote a large stretch of time to it. Also, there are online leaderboards for the scores on each challenge, which adds another reason to replay the sections for the group that enjoys competing against scores.
At a $9.99 price point it feels like you're definitely getting a solid game, even if it's missing the online mode that I was hoping to see, and if there's DLC support for the game in the future, then it's a pretty good starting point for the game in general. There's a lot of unlockable costume/character stuff to find, a pretty cool character creator that allows you to come up with some pretty random designs, and as a kung fu fan in general I love the design of the game, including the music that feels like a throwback to some early Shaw Bros. films at times. If you're looking for a new title on the PSN to try out, then I say you should give this one a go, and hope that we can see online patched in at a later date.
