Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the movie was an exciting 2 hours well spent. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the game is nothing short of an unplayable mess that seems to have been released before testing/QA even got a look at it.
Let's start with the fighting engine, or rather, the lack of one. CTHD's combat has got to be some of the sloppiest I have experienced this year, or any other for that matter. You have four attack buttons, two for unarmed combat and two for weapons-based skirmishes. Now, you would think with all these attack buttons at your disposal, you would be able to flow into combo after combo, effortlessly taking out hordes of enemies that surround you on all sides, just like the stylish action in the movie. Right?
Sure, you'd think that. But you'd be wrong.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's combat has none of the awesome fluidity from the film, nor does it have any cohesive structure to it – you mash buttons on the controller, hoping to hit the bad guys before their sheer numbers overwhelm you. Most of the time, you'll have little to no luck with this, seeing as how every time you attack with a non-armed attack, your character actually has to put away the sword before executing said maneuver. The ability to jump off walls and glide from rooftop to rooftop is duly noted, though it just makes it all the painful when you realize the best thing about the game is its jumping mechanic.
Aside from Crouching Tiger's abhorrent gameplay, it looks terrible for a game this late in the PS2's lifetime; and even worse once you realize it's been three years since the film came out. While the scenes from the movie are as breathtaking as ever, the in-game graphics have a low-budget look to them and are miserably bland for the most part. The hellspawned camera never does what you want it to do, and this will cause more than a few deaths during battles with 3 or 4 enemies at once. The sound fares a bit better, but that's probably only because it's all in Chinese with English subtitles, and I can't tell if they are really being dramatic, or just giving another "Resident Evil" type performance. Given the rest of the game as a standard by which to judge, I'd guess the latter.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an uncontrollable, unplayable sham of a game that doesn't do its license justice at all. Avoid it at all costs.
-George
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