Genre : Action
Developer: UBI Soft
Publisher: UBI Soft
Release date: October 7, 2003

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's theatrical release in the U.S. was about three years ago. So why, you may ask, is a game based on that film coming out now? Honestly, I don't know. An even bigger question is, why would anybody want to make a game based on a movie that was as story-driven as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was? I can't answer that, either. But the game is here. Unsurprisingly, it isn't very good. But how could anybody make a good videogame based on a movie that was so intertwined with the intricacies of it's medium? Nobody should have expected a great game, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the GBA doesn't deliver as a videogame, never mind preserving the integrity of the film from which it takes it's name.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an uninspiring, slow moving action side-scroller that would have been right at home on the Sega Genesis about ten years ago. Even then it would have been considered a failed attempt at the gameplay of Sega's classic Shinobi. You play as Jen, a young girl who is extremely talented in Kung Fu, but misled by Jade Fox, a martial arts master, into stealing the Green Destiny sword, the blade of Mu Bai, another martial arts master, who wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life in peace. Jen moves much slower than she should, making the game feel as though you are struggling to get her to react in the way you want to. She does have a selection of "powerful" kung-fu moves which are executed by using Street Fighter-esque button combinations, but most of these don't do as much damage as they probably should, and more often than not, serve to simply drain your Chi energy bar. Chi is gained by defeating enemies. The amount of Chi used by each move in proportion to how much you gain by killing a foe is very much unbalanced, as a single half-second long attack that will do about as much damage as a few well-placed normal attacks will drain all of the Chi you have collected.

The enemies have very predictable patterns, but this can be a good thing. I enjoyed learning the patterns of each enemy type and applying that to finding out the best way to take them out. It's been a long time since I've been able to apply that kind of thinking to a videogame, Contra: Shattered Solider being another somewhat recent example of this, though Shattered Solider did it much better than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Oftentimes, the game will throw a horde of the same enemy type at you over and over, and if you have their simple attack patterns memorized, this becomes more of a chore, less of a challenge, akin in terms of difficulty to, say, beating up someone who is three feet shorter than you are. They might be able to hurt you, but if you remember to push them back before they get too close, they won't be able to get a scratch on you. Though this is rarer than the aforementioned situation, there are times when the combination of different enemy types is extremely difficult to process, sometimes because a few of the attack patterns are very cheap, such as one enemy who does a flying kick that will hurt you even if just a bit of the man's clothing comes in contact with you, but often enough, it's a good, solid challenge to learn how to deal with certain combinations of enemies. Still, these situations aren't common enough to save this game from the pool of mediocrity it's wading in.

The game is very short, spanning just over twelve levels, split up periodically by giving you a password to write down to save your place (the game does not have a battery save feature - always a telling sign that the developer doesn't care much about the integrity of the game). The level design is completely uninspired, and doesn't bear much resemblance to the movie. If it wasn't for the aforementioned periodically enjoyable enemy patterns, each level would be an extremely below average puddle of boredom. The controls make navigating the levels a pain, especially during the chase sequences, when you have to jump from wall to wall up a shaft. The controls are so inexplicably stingy with doing what you want them to, that such a simple task as hopping from wall to wall is turned into an annoying, frustrating affair. Having your pursuer knocking you down repeatedly while you try to make your way up these shafts doesn't help things one bit. Later in the game (well, five minutes later, but five minutes means a lot in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon time, since you can finish the game in a few hours), you will have a chase sequence while on a horse, which is not so horrible control-wise, but it is very hard to learn enemy patterns when the level is scrolling by so quickly. The way the horse levels are set up, they don't feel like well-crafted challenges, but half-assed messes that prove difficult only by default. Still, I did not die once during these sequences - they were just annoying to play through, that is all.

The graphics are under-detailed and very blurry on the regular Gameboy Advance screen, meaning they are horrific when seen on the TV via the GCN Gameboy Player. Characters, enemies, and backgrounds alike are an eyesore. This is one of those games that makes you wonder if you're been transported back to 1993. Yes, the Gameboy Advance is a little 32-bit handheld, but the quality of graphics that it can push is worlds better than that of 1993. Also, developers have more experience these days, so even if the GBA was of, say, Genesis or SNES quality, the games would be expected to look much better today than ten years ago. The cutscenes are even worse, taking stills of the actors from the movie and pasting them over ugly backgrounds, looking like a horrible paper doll puppet show.

The sound is in the same category as the graphics: badly done, and the parts that are taken from the movie are even worse. There isn't much more to say about this aspect of the game.

I really don't understand why UBI Soft even bothered releasing this game - the movie is no longer a hot license, which leaves a very small minority of potential buyers, since most hardcore gamers know to stay clear of games like this. It's not the worst game ever released (by far), and even has some fun moments, yet it's problems bog down any bit of fun you might have had. The reason for this game's existence is a complete enigma to me. If you do happen to see it in a bargain bin for a few dollars, it might be worth the purchase, as there is some fun to be had, and it's very short, so you won't have to deal with it's annoying features for very long. That's the best I can say about this one.

Score: 5.5/10