In the current PC game landscape, there are a good number of fighting games. Lots of the big names — The King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter — are on the platform with others, like Dead or Alive, on the way. Smaller games, like Skullgirls, are here as well, and more niche fighters, like BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, have PC representation, with fans still holding out hope for holdouts like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. There are even a few exclusives to the platform, with the likes of Vanguard Princess and the various games under the Touhou Project umbrella. With the market only getting bigger, newcomers need a hook to attract people to their fighting title. For Kings of Kung Fu: Masters of the Art, that hook comes from the movies.

In Kings of Kung Fu, eight of the best martial arts stunt people have been called together to participate in a tournament where the winner will be the lead stunt person for an upcoming blockbuster. It is an overarching story, so no one has a personal backstory and nothing matters beyond winning the fight, so don't expect a bigger and better plot hiding in the shadows.

Each of the characters represents actors from various martial arts films, and while their names are very different, their looks and styles are immediately recognizable. The expected Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme clones are here, but there are also ones for Jim Brown and Tony Jaa available. Jackie Chan gets represented twice, one for his drunken style and the other for the monkey style, and you also have some common themes thrown into the mix, like the female fighter and the monk. There's even the boss who looks very much like Sho'nuff from "The Last Dragon," and if that wasn't enough, the developers have already shown off some work for characters that look a lot like Donnie Yen and Bolo Yeung coming soon. For martial arts fans, this might as well be the video game equivalent of "The Expendables."

The presentation also provides a cinematic feel in the form of classic kung fu flicks made popular by studios like Shaw Brothers. There's a heavy layer of film grain on the screen and a level of brightness at the center, with the colors darkening as it moves toward the edges. It may be widescreen and move very smoothly, but the screenshots with all of the visual effects turned on certainly make the game look like any of the films you'd catch on a weekend afternoon on TV.

The music is more modern, with a mix of heavy beats and more traditional Chinese instruments that makes it sound like it was inspired by RZA. The themed hip-hop score works very well with the action and sounds good on its own.

With the heavy adherence to classic martial arts movies, it should come as no surprise that the moves you can pull off are more grounded in reality than in most other fighting games. You'll see some of the more amazing things, like the splits and the signature flying kicks, but those were captured in celluloid without the need for special effects. Things like fireballs and gravity-defying twirling kicks are nowhere to be found here, so the game doesn't play into the idea of distance fighting or spamming special moves. There's certainly an idea of fighting smarter, as you won't unleash a barrage of moves, and it nicely incorporates the idea of a balanced system of defense and offense done at just the right time.

There are lots of good ideas in the game so far, and the execution is nicely done. Kings of Kung Fu is still a Steam Early Access title, but for now, it lacks an online mode. Local multiplayer works fine, but online play would ensure that more opponents are available. The fighting is pretty solid but rather stiff. Dashes, for example, are nowhere to be found, and most moves don't fluidly transition. The hitboxes are also a little suspect, something that is noticeable when the final hit in a round is delivered and the opponent falls before the strike makes contact. The transition between rounds is also a little too quick, as the end of a round immediately begins a new one, and there's no breather in between. The camera is a bit too close to the fighters at the moment, so it pans up when a person jumps, making the title a little too jumpy for most players.

The most striking issue so far is in the strength of the hits, which seems rather miniscule. It takes a great deal of hits before anyone is even knocked down, and that's only if you're up against an opponent who doesn't like to block. To demonstrate how bad this is, we ran several CPU-vs.-CPU matches, and almost all of them ended when the time expired. With the damage output being so low, the rounds feel much longer than they should and can lead to the feeling that things are dragging.

Kings of Kung Fu is current in Steam Early Access, and so far, things are looking good. Despite the aforementioned issues, the fighting has a solid base, so players can have some fun without having to learn the special moves right away. The theme is great, and the number of updates for the game in such a short period of time shows that the developers are committed to making a title that can stand up to the bigger ones in the genre. The current $8 price makes it a good deal in its current status, and those who don't like Early Access games should definitely keep Kings of Kung Fu on their radar.