Editorial Review
Rap meets raw combat in
Wu-Tang Clan: Shaolin Style, a violent fighting game that plays a lot like a '70s kung-fu flick--with a little
Mortal Kombat thrown in. Members of the rap group Wu-Tang Clan are present and ready to mix it up. RZA, GZA, Raekwon, Method Man--they're all here, each with his own special shaolin fighting abilities. The soundtrack, which is sure to score points with fans of the rappers, provides background music for battle arenas set in Staten Island, New York, and ancient China.
Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style also features three new exclusive Wu-Tang tracks.
The cantankerous Wu-Tang Clan members meld perfectly into the video game world, and each character has some truly flashy moves. GZA wields a microphone on a chain-blade chord. Raekwon's specialty is cooking up opponents in a large boiling vat. Other members use a more traditional approach with swords and acrobatics.
Although the game is a little slow and repetitive at times, it's dripping with raw street style and attitude--which should be enough to keep Wu-Tang fans happy while appeasing fighting game fans in general. Up to four players can fight at once. (Parents should note that this is one of the more violent fighting games on the market.) --Bill Hutchens
Pros:
- Wicked combos with devastating effects
- Good mix of pulsating rap rhythms
- Interesting interactive arenas
Cons: - Control is sometimes slow and clunky
- Slightly unbalanced; some characters easily overpower others
GameSpot Review
From Midway's 1983 arcade game based on the band Journey to Sega's Make Your Own Music Video series on the Sega CD, companies have been trying - usually in vain - to tie the recording industry and the gaming industry together in ways deeper than merely featuring an artist on a game's soundtrack. Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style takes the concepts of the Wu mythos, rife with influences from tons of 1970s kung-fu films, and turns it into a four-player arena fighting game with supernatural powers and bloody fatalities. The game's story is told through a few prerendered cutscenes. It seems that the last living Wu-Tang master, Xin, is hiding out on Staten Island, where he has nine pupils (the Wu-Tang Clan - or Rza, Genius, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon, Master Killa, U-God, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and the Method Man, in case you forgot). Mong Zhu, an evil warlord, feels that he could rule the world if only he knew the ancient secrets of the Wu-Tang discipline. So he heads to New York and captures Xin. It's up to you, as one of the nine members of the multiplatinum-rap-group-turned-martial-arts-masters, to give chase and stop Mong Zhu. The one-player mode puts you through numerous levels, but more important than completing levels is earning all 36 chambers. Each chamber is achieved by completing a specific task, such as performing four throws in a match, using a new fatality, executing a tech roll, pulling off a ten-hit combo, beating several levels in a row without continuing, and visiting bonus stages. As you put together strings of related chambers, you'll unlock secrets, such as hidden characters, extra fatalities, concept art, and bonus costumes. The bonus costumes are really strange. ODB turns into a clown, Method Man turns into a guy holding a Final Fantasy-sized sword, and Genius becomes a leather-clad woman who, of course, still speaks in the Gza's gruff voice. The 36th chamber is earned by beating the game's final boss, but you can't face him until you've earned the first 35. Some chambers (blocking six hits in a row) are really easy to complete, but certain characters simply aren't very good at getting eight-, nine-, or ten-hit combos. So it's not unheard of to get 28 or 30 chambers and have to spend hours trying to juggle an enemy just right to get that eight-hitter chamber. The game's sub boss, a Raiden-clone complete with electricity powers, is mind-numbingly hard to beat when compared with the relative ease of defeating the rest of your opponents, including Mong Zhu. Expect to spend some time thinking of a cheap way to beat him. The fighting system is on the right track, but it just doesn't work out quite as well as it could have. It tries to be a cohesive, combo-driven system, but the arena-style free-for-all nature of the game's combat doesn't lend itself well to calculated fighting. Instead, it simply forces you to learn as many cheap corner juggles as you can. The entire game idea was lifted from Paradox's cancelled endeavor, Thrill Kill, and much of the gameplay and many of the moves remain. Each member of the Wu has his own style. The Rza fights with his razor sharp swords. Method uses a hammer. Raekwon fights in the style of a boxer. The Ol' Dirty Bastard fights in a drunken style - just as in real life. But most of the game's special moves aren't terribly impressive or flashy, and most multiplayer fights eventually boil down to who can swing the fastest and who forgets to hit the block button. Each battle ends in a fatality (provided you've entered the parental lockout code, which is found in the back of the game manual), that, for the most part, isn't terribly imaginative. How many times can you watch Rza pin a guy to a wall with his swords and shout, "Plug in, son! Get connected?" Even with four fatalities per character, they get old pretty quickly. There are a few imaginative finishers (ODB straps his foe to a giant rocket and launches him into the sky in his third fatality), but most of them are simple "hit the guy until he blows up-" or "cut off some body parts-"style fatalities. Speech usually accompanies the fatalities, but most of it sounds as though it were sampled from some other source rather than recorded specifically for the game. One of my favorites is ODB's first fatality, where he mounts his opponent and rips the guy's head off, which is followed by someone that sounds vaguely like Dirty (maybe he was having a bad day in the studio, or maybe he was too busy - with legal troubles or with releasing his second solo album - to actually record his own voice work for the game) exclaiming, "Don't mess with Big Baby Jesus!" It's funny every time I hear it, and it's the one of the few shining points in an otherwise drab game.
--Jeff Gerstmann--
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by The RZA
DVD ~ Wu-Tang Clan
DVD ~ Gordon Liu
