Kung Fu Panda 2 THQ Purchase Online   The Short: Kung Fu Panda 2 is a decent Kinect game and let’s face it there’s like four decent Kinect games available. Plus it’s a very cool way for kids to feel like they’re in the Kung Fu Panda universe. It’s not a must own or anything like that, but young gamers will love being involved with Poe and the five and Kinect owners will like having a good piece of software to play through. Kung Fu Panda 2 for the XBOX 360 features Kinect gameplay. As far as I know it’s the first big licensed franchise to take advantage of the peripheral. Kinect is a blast play with different titles. Some of them work great… others not as good, but either way it’s a video game experience unlike any other. Kung Fu Panda 2 resides in the middle of the class when it comes to Kinect games. There are some small frustrations, but there’s lots of fun to be had too. In the X360 version Kung Fu Panda 2, the story picks up where the movie left off. Now that the evil Shen is out of power, the other bad guys are trying to pick up on his territory. Poe and the Five have to protect the city from being overrun by evil. You get to play as Poe. There are three main Kinect modes of play with Kung Fu Panda 2 and you play through all of them in the story mode of the game. You fight against bad guys with punching, kicking, blocking, and then doing a special finishing move that’s pretty cool. You also get to do some racing modes where you veer left and right and jump out of obstacles. And it wouldn’t be Kung Fu Panda related if you didn’t get to serve up some noodles too, so yes… you get to serve up noodles. All three Kinect modes of play can be accessed independently or in the story mode and all are a blast to play through. If you’ve got your Kinect installed and placed correctly you should all frustrations involved with the game not picking up your movements too. The frustrating parts of Kung Fu Panda 2 mainly exist with the story mode. The cut scenes are placed too close together in several points of the game and at the beginning of the game they take way too long to get through before you get to play. For an eight year old wanting to do some kung fu… that’s pretty frustrating. The other negative with the game is the animation done in the cut scenes. It’s not terrible, but it’s not really up to par with other games and the character design is a bit rough with fur design. Kung Fu Panda 2 is a decent Kinect game and let’s face it there’s like four decent Kinect games available. Plus it’s a very cool way for kids to feel like they’re in the Kung Fu Panda universe. It’s not a must own or anything like that, but young gamers will love being involved with Poe and the five and Kinect owners will like having a good piece of software to play through.                     Kung Fu Panda 2 (DS Review) Purchase Online Kung Fu Panda 2 for the DS isn’t what you’d expect out of a licensed DS title. Instead of the typical action/platforming title that you usually get with licensed games, you’re getting a turn-based RPG game. That’s both a good and a bad thing. The good is that gamers who love Pokémon and games like that; kids in the 9-12 age range; will like to play through this one. The bad is that kids out of that age range aren’t going to be fans. Like the other Kung Fu Panda 2 titles, this game takes place after the events of the movie. The city is being overrun by bad guys aver Shen was taken down by Poe. They see it as their opportunity to take over territory and it’s up to Poe and the Five to stop them. As noted before, this is a turn-based RPG game that means you’re getting the good and the bad with that type of game. The good is that for strategy fans, they love to plan out their moves and figure out how to counter opponent’s moves. For action fans, it’s a boring title where you get to choose a button every 30 seconds. Not great.  There’s also a ton of dialogue text in the game and that will keep action fans away from the title too. The other big negative with the DS version of Kung Fu Panda 2 is that for a turn-based game there’s no challenge to it at all. You always get to go first no matter what villain you face or what level you’re on and you pick up different moves through the game that destroy your opponent pretty much immediately. It’s an extremely easy game to play through. The DS version of Kung Fu Panda 2 is a little weak. It would have been better to produce a platform/fighting game instead of a turn-based RPG. Kudos to the developers for trying to make something unique… but it just didn’t pan out the way it should have.

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