Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic

When I am not playing Borderlands, I seem to allows go to Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic for some alternative gameage. I managed to get the game free a couple of months back and I never really played it. However, lately I have been playing it quite often.

Rag Doll Kung Fu is a fighting game with rag doll physics. Rag doll physics is nothing really special but adds a different element to a game over other physics styles and can be a lot of fun.

Rag Doll Kung Fu then adds some “kung fu” and some neat moves. The kung fu is debatable since all you can do is punch, kick, and block for your non special moves. I guess they get the kung fu from the characters, the setting, and the clothes.

However, there are some neat special moves. The Firefly is a move that can save your life and should be one of your most used abilities. The Firefly is an attack where you launch in whatever direction you want and super speed and do some serious damage. This is a great way to keep yourself from falling off of ledges as well as getting out of some tough spots. The Firefly is just the tip of the iceberg.

The lightning ball is another pretty devastating attack. In single player, it can easily one hit kill an opponent if fully charged. When I think of the lightning ball, I kind of the think of the Spirit Bomb from the Dragonball universe. You can hold it for a decent amount of time and you can aim it anywhere. However, after a certain period of time, the lightning ball will just disappear. Still, there are more special moves available in your arsenal.

The chi slam has been the most underused special attack for me but is really important and should be used more often. This is a great attack to use when falling towards the ground. It is similar to the Firefly in that you charge towards the ground but instead of just hitting an opponent you do damage to opponents within the area. That is it for the special attacks but there is one more special move.

The last special ability you have is to recharge your health by meditating. At first, I rarely used this but it really helps to get further during the match. When meditating, you cross your arms and legs and start floating with a blue aura. You are extremely vulnerable to attack but if you do it right it shouldn’t effect you to much. My favorite thing to do is while jumping towards the other end of the screen start meditating and you float further and is also harder for the enemies to hit you. On some maps, AI enemies can’t hit you if you do this right.

All the special abilities rely on your chi gauge. You can have up to 5 chi and it is recharged by doing attacks and acrobatics. Each ability uses one chi. However, meditate can be continued for more than that one chi and will keep healing until you run out of chi. After that, you fall to the ground. Also, the lighting ball can be charged up with all five chi. The end result is an extremely devastating attack.

Another element is the acrobatics. You can grab ledges, propel yourself into doing spins on that ledge and launch yourself towards other ledges and grab onto them. This has seemed pretty useless during actual fights but is fun to do none the less.

The game is both single player and multi player. However, the single player is almost none existent. For single player, you try to complete challenges and earn medals for getting so far during those challenges. These challenges are:
Survivor which is you keep fighting tougher and tougher waves of enemies
– Sharpshooter is where you try to shoot as many barrows as you can and try to not miss to keep the score multiplier going
– Capture the Fish, you try to get as many fish into the basket as possible while avoiding the enemy(ies)
– Acrobatics, you try to keep your chain of launching and regrabbing ledges going without landing to get as high of a score as possible
– King of the Hill, you try to stay on the top plank without any enemies to rack up points
– Way of the Firefly is where you try to keep hitting barrels by use of the firefly. Landing resets your multiplier
– Cleaning Up is like Survivor but you are on a mountain and throw enemies off or you can fall off of
– Kung Fu Juggling makes you try to keep the dummy opponent in the air with attacks as long as possible without them landing. The dummy landing on the ground resets your multiplier

There are also four multiplayer modes.
– Deathmatch pits everyone against each other and the player with the most kills at the end wins
– Capture the Fish is similar to the single player one but teams compete against each other to get the most fish in
– King of the Hill is the same as the single player but instead of AI you are fighting other people
– Dodgeball involves throwing a one hit kill dodgeball at each other. Most kills is the winner

So, overall Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic is a pretty enjoyable PSN downloadable game. It manages to keep you playing despite its simplicity and can be a real challenge at times. Way of the Firefly is also a good workout so you can say that while playing you are getting exercise and don’t have to feel so stupid. I say if you don’t have it get it.

Jonathan Rudzitis (15 Posts)