Kung Fu Chaos, as the name implies, provides frantic kung fu action for up to four players simultaneously. Most of this action takes place on blockbuster-inspired movie sets that are both interactive and constantly moving. Whether you’re trying to create your movie masterpiece on a low-budget Jurassic Park set or an Indiana Jones-like temple of kitsch, your director (Shao Ting) will call the shots as you battle your B-movie brethren. But as you might expect from a party game, your best bet is to have those co-starring brethren controlled by actual human opponents, because the single-player aspects in Kung Fu Chaos generally have to settle for Best Supporting Game Mode.

Without a doubt, Kung Fu Chaos is a multiplayer game first and single-player title second. I’ve not had as much fun playing a game in its multiplayer mode since Halo, and whether you like fighters, racers or team-based shooters, the only recent game that’s comparable in its multiplayer addiction is Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon. I learned long ago not to discount party games (as my continued Fuzion Frenzy nights will attest), and games like Kung Fu Chaos are the reason why.

As a party game, Kung Fu Chaos excels at giving gamers pick-up-and-play controls. That’s not to say there’s a shortage of moves; in fact, the game includes blocking, taunting, strung-together combos and super moves in addition to the standard quick attacks, power attacks and jumping. It’s just that the moves are all incredibly simple to pull off. Where the true art of this ‘70s-era brawler lies is in mastering those controls to get your star on the wok of fame.

In the single-player mode, this is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that the controls are simple enough that you’ll probably unlock most of the levels in a matter of hours, which enables you to both see all that the game has to offer and make available a multitude of multiplayer levels shortly after opening the package. To do so, you must earn a rating of three stars on one level to unlock the following one, which is relatively easy. If you achieve four or five stars, you’ll unlock additional costumes, a miniseries for each character and/or new uber-levels and replay filters.

Yet therein lies the curse: actually achieving four or five stars on every level using such simple controls. As was the case in Fuzion Frenzy, the AI in Kung Fu Chaos can be quite challenging in single-player mode, and the fast action necessary to achieve the nirvana of “100-percent unlocked” is extremely difficult when you combine the AI with a lack of character variation and each level’s predictability.

The characters all feature the same speed and strength, so accomplishing any given move does the same damage in the same amount of time but using different animations. As a result, your choice of character will be based either on your favorite “skin” or your preference for one Super Kill over another.

To pull off a Super Kill, you need to successfully taunt three fallen opponents, then pull both triggers to unleash your unstoppable Super Kill. Yes, you read that correctly: unstoppable. When you or your opponent pulls off a Super Kill, forget about there being any survivors. This may at first seem unbalanced, but the AI doesn’t let you taunt willy-nilly, so in the long run it’s actually quite an entertaining feature. But again, the only difference from character to character is in the illustration, not the impact, so don’t worry about having to play the pink roller-skater, Candi Roll. (In fact, her Twister-like Super Kill is pretty sweet.)

The levels themselves are amazingly creative, but their scripted events are just that: scripted. Crates on the Titanic-inspired “Gigantic Crack” fall in the same order, while the vines in the Jurassic Park-like “Enter the Dino” always threaten to knock you down at the same time. This means that achieving a four- or five-star rating requires darn near perfection, because the levels aren’t going to give you any new opportunities later on to make up for your early failures.

In multiplayer modes these complaints are all for naught, because you actually want everyone on the same feature-set playing field, and you can appreciate the predictable levels because you’re looking to throw obstacles for fun rather than a certain number of stars. Essentially, where Kung Fu Chaos fails to achieve single-player and unlockable nirvana, the game achieves it tenfold in its party-game action.

Graphics

Basing the game on 70s-style kung fu movies provides all sorts of opportunities for graphical parody, and virtually any joke you can imagine is here in one form or another. What’s most impressive, though, is that the jokes are there in both quantity and quality.

Kung Fu Chaos naturally has a bit of a kid appeal, so the bright colors and exaggerated features are out in full force, from the Afro-sporting Lucy Cannon to the wild-eyed Master Sho-Yu. For adults, though, the parodies also provide some great opportunities to show off very impressive graphical enhancements such as depth-of-field blurs, replay filters and particle effects (rolling fog, billowing smoke, even dust swirling around with blowing leaves).

Despite the constantly moving environments, the game maintains a consistent framerate throughout, even when two or more people are unleashing a particle-effect-heavy Super Kill. Where the graphics are especially potent are the replays, or “Final Cuts.” These are available in the game’s multiplayer modes, and similar to Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions, they include some impressive visual filters, creative Xbox-controlled editing and the actual in-game audio (taunts, etc.). If there’s a fault graphically, it’s the occasional jaggy in close-up shots, but they’re never anything disastrous, and they never detract from your enjoyment of the game.

“Cliché ’70s” is the best way to describe the sound of Kung Fu Chaos. From the soundtrack (yes, “Kung Fu Fighting” is a licensed song) to the sound effects, it’s all a lesson in stereotypes gone wrong. Or very, very right, in this case.

In a surprising move for such a slapstick game, the sound effects are stereotypical not in the sense of ninjas saying “hiya” every time they swing, but in their subtle hint at the game’s 70s-movie mockery. For example, one of Ninja Fu Hiya’s taunts is “You know kung fu…,” similar to the fabled line from just about any movie in which the ninja hero meets an unassuming foe. Likewise, another of his taunts asks, “Yes, but do you know this?” yet another stereotypical line. In both cases, you can close your eyes and visualize the bad dubbing alongside grainy film.

The environmental sounds are also strong, and given the variety of movie-inspired levels, you’re bound to hear anything from tropical rushing waterfalls to alien death rays. The “environmental” sounds of your director can get tiresome, though, particularly if you find yourself replaying a level over and over while trying to earn four or more stars. But hey, at least it’s all delivered in Dolby Digital.

Party games seldom get old, and Kung Fu Chaos is no exception. Naturally, the multiplayer aspects keep the game fresh time and again, because you’re never quite sure what your opponent will do. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the predictable single-player experience, although the miniseries that you can unlock for each character are both extremely challenging and add to the longevity of the single-player experience.

If you don’t have friends, the aspect that will probably keep you coming back for more isn’t the unlockable items but the built-in minigames. Interestingly, several seem to have taken pages from Fuzion Frenzy, Microsoft’s other party game. These include a sumo-like game in which you try to bounce opposing bots off of a slippery iceberg and a game in which you throw bombs at one another to take the other guys out. Other minigames are entirely original, such as a level in which you throw a princess at opposing ninjas to try to knock them from their precarious platforms high above a bamboo forest.

With a game like Kung Fu Chaos, it’s important to look at the sum of its parts. As a single-player game, the party brawler is lacking in several areas, most notably the simple yet sometimes simply frustrating moves. It’s also somewhat short in the single-player mode, presuming you’re able to sleep knowing you’ve only unlocked about 50 percent of the game.

As a multiplayer title, though, Kung Fu Chaos is a fantastic experience. True, none of the characters is any better than the others, but that’s one of the things that makes the game so approachable when you’ve got a roomful of friends. The multiplayer aspects also benefit from the single-player mode’s brevity, because you’ll soon be able to battle it out over at least a dozen different levels. It’s definitely a yin and yang game in this sense, and taken as a whole, Kung Fu Chaos is a pretty solid balance.