DreamWorks Kung Fu Panda

Most film tie-ins of 2008 arrived with a scratch voice cast and a level select. This one had Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Ian McShane back at the microphone, and a combat system built by Luxoflux, the studio behind the True Crime games. That combination is the reason the Kung Fu Panda adaptation is remembered at all rather than filed with the rest of the summer licence rush.

Po fights with a light and heavy attack, a throw, and a growing list of strings unlocked with points earned in play. Nothing about it is deep, but the strings have weight and distinct animation, and the game is happy to let you cancel one into another rather than locking you into a fixed sequence. Belly bounces send goats flying. Enemies telegraph clearly, blocking matters more than it usually does in a children's brawler, and the boss encounters against the Wu Sisters and Tai Lung ask you to actually read a pattern instead of mashing until the health bar empties.

Between the fights it becomes a fairly conventional platformer, and this is where the PS2 build shows its seams. Bamboo pole balancing, rope swings, timed jumps across collapsing scenery: competent, occasionally floaty, and cut with rail-slide sequences that exist mainly to break the rhythm. The camera behaves in corridors and sulks in open arenas. Textures are flat and the character models are noticeably softer than the versions running on the newer machines, though the art direction survives the downgrade because the film's colour palette does most of the work.

What holds up is the pacing. Levels are short, checkpoints are generous, and the script fills the loading gaps with material written for the game rather than lifted from the trailer. Sequences that the movie only implies, like Po's early stumbling through the Jade Palace training hall, get whole stages here. It is a game made by people who watched the film and asked what was left over.

As a family action title it does the job with more care than the category usually gets, and an adult playing alongside a child will find the combat has just enough shape to stay interesting for four or five hours. That is a modest achievement, and in the licensed-game economy of the sixth generation, a rare one.