Kung-Fu Panda was one of the biggest movies of this past summer, and was pretty well-received by critics. The Kung-Fu Panda game came out around the same time, and while it’s not going to replace GoldenEye as best movie/game adaptation ever, it was a perfectly decent little action/platformer that kept enough of the fun and spirit of the movie to entertain the film’s pre-teen audience. But now, just five months later Activision has released another Kung-Fu Panda game, Legendary Warriors, set to accompany the film’s DVD release (not to mention the lucrative Christmas season). And while Legendary Warriors isn’t an exact clone of the previous game, the changes they’ve made aren’t really for the better.

Legendary Warriors starts off after the events of the movie, with peace returned to the Valley of, well, Peace. It’s all thanks to Po the Panda, who managed to defeat the evil Tai Lung with the assistance of Kung-Fu masters the Furious Five. Except guess what? Tai Lung isn’t quite as defeated as you might think, as he returns and kidnaps the Furious Five (well, four of them anyway). It’s up to Po and Tigress to locate and defeat Tai Lung to rescue their captured friends. The game’s story is about as simple as it could be, pretty much just “Hey, remember what happened in the movie? It’s happened again!” This was the first indication that the game might not be much more than a simple cash-in, a quick attempt on Activision’s part to get Kung-Fu Panda fans (or more accurately, Kung-Fu Panda fans’ parents) to buy another game version.

Gameplay pretty much proved that suspicion right. The original game borrowed the structure of the recent Castlevania titles, where you explore each area to find new powers, which grant access to new areas. Legendary Warriors scraps this design in favor of a more straightforward level-based action game design. While the first game’s gameplay was in 2D, here you explore each stage in limited 3D (like the old Crash Bandicoot games — you can move in 3D, but each level is more like a path than wide-open). The fighting action is more straightforward, too — instead of drawing slashes on the touch screen to activate your various attacks, simple button presses are chained together into combos. In many ways, Legendary Warriors resembles a cut-down version of the console KFP game, rather than the previous DS installment. Which would be fine, if the game was fun to play.

 
The game’s few enemy models repeat throughout the experience.

Which, sad to say, it is not. The fighting mechanics are too simple to be interesting or entertaining, and fighting is pretty much all you do. Sure, the fact that you can choose to play as Po or Tigress (each with their own set of levels) is nice, but aside from a few unique moves each, the game’s pretty much the same regardless of which character you pick. You’ll follow each stage’s path, fighting assorted bad guys as you go, until you get to a spot where walls spring up around you and you have to fight either a group of weak enemies or one large enemy before you’re allowed to go on. It’s a simple formula that’s repeated throughout the game, long after it’s gotten old.

 
Every so often you’ll face off against a big sub-boss, but they’re not really that threatening.

There are other little elements to the gameplay, but nothing that really makes that big an impact. There are some slight platforming elements at times, but the platforming isn’t challenging or involved enough to really keep your attention; it seems like the developers added the jumping sequences just to break up the monotony, with little regard for creating fun platforming areas. They’ve also included some touch-screen elements, like using the stylus to set ropes swinging or activate in-game mechanisms, but this feels pretty tacked-on. You can also activate powerful Chi attacks by tracing symbols onscreen, but to do so you’ve got to take your hand off the attack buttons. This wasn’t very well thought-through, because any enemy who’s tough enough to require you to use your Chi attacks is going to be killing you while you’re busy drawing on the screen — usually it’s just faster and more effective to use your regular attacks.

The game has a decent 3D engine (well, decent by DS standards, anyway), so all your favorite characters and locales are recognizable and look pretty good. The stages are pretty empty, though, with few objects or elements outside of walls to distinguish each area. The characters animate well enough, and some of Po’s animations do a good job of conveying a sense of weight and clumsiness to the character (Tigress movements, on the other hand are smooth and agile). The music’s about what you’d expect and nothing more, so be prepared for nondescript Asian tunes.

 
The fights look decent, but not that exciting.

Kung-Fu Panda: Legendary Warriors isn’t a bad game; none of the game’s elements are particularly poorly done, and I could see a kid having fun beating up animals in the game’s world. But the fact of the matter is that there’s already a superior Kung-Fu Panda game available for the DS. In light of this, I can’t really recommend Legendary Warriors to anyone but the film’s biggest fans.

Gameplay: 6.5
There’s some competent-enough brawling action in the game, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen or done a hundred times before. Punching and kicking your way through hundreds of evil kung-fu animals might sound like a good time, but it gets old real quick.

Graphics: 6.8
The 3D here isn’t bad by DS standards, but it doesn’t impress either. Each character looks and moves like their film counterpart, but environments are usually empty paths, and enemy models have little detail and repeat far too often. The fighting isn’t bad to look at, but it’s never really visually exciting, either.

Sound: 6.2
Unremarkable Chinese-style songs are the order of the day here — they’re not bad, but you won’t remember them even seconds after finishing the stage. Sound effects are what you’re really listening to most of the time, and they consist of various moans, screams, and beating sounds. If you play with the volume all the way down, you’re not missing anything.

Difficulty: Easy
You can button-mash your way through pretty easily. Some of the boss characters have cheap attacks that can deal lots of damage quickly, but you can heal yourself at any time, so you have to really not be paying attention to die.

Concept: 5.6
An overweight panda doing martial arts is a decent idea for a movie or a game, but it’s been done at this point. Being able to switch characters is kinda nice, but it’s hardly the kind of innovation that deserves its own game.

Overall: 6.4
Kung-Fu Panda, the movie and the game, were successes — but to release another game this soon after the original’s release just seems greedy. If Kung-Fu Panda is your absolute favorite movie and you’ve already memorized the first game, you’ll probably want to play this. Otherwise, Legendary Warriors isn’t worthy of your time or money.