With an inspired story, captivating characters and beautiful locations, the developers of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had all the raw materials they needed to make a stunning video game. Somewhere along the way, however, they spectacularly cocked it up.
In an attempt to recreate the fluid fighting choreographed by martial arts master Yuen Wo-Ping, the game adopts a novel system where tapping the block button in a specified rhythm allows your hero to duck, jump and weave around their enemies and dodge attacks. However, once youve mastered this system, the fights quickly become boring and repetitive, and youll soon yearn for more opportunities to be aggressive rather than playing defensive moves all the time.
The sloppy design, drab environments and appalling camera dont help matters either, making Crouching Tiger yet another movie tie-in that fails to capture the thrills of the film that inspired it.