The Monkey King: The Legend Begins Game Sample - Wii
52We're back everyone, and we hope you're all having a great new year! After moving again and taking a brief hiatus to get situated and relax, we're taking the last few videos off the back-burner (three Wii titles, one X360 title) and uploading them while working on new content. The good news is that they're a little more niche than the average Wii/360 games. The bad news is... well, some of them aren't so great.
Case in point, "The Monkey King: The Legend Begins" is one of two games not only based around the lore of the Monkey King (the other is "Saint"), but it also shares the same publisher (UFO Interactive). Coincidentally, they are both also fairly poor in design (though this is "slightly" better than Saint IMO), but this game bothers me a little more because it's an update to a classic game I first played on the Sega Master System in the early 90s known as "Cloud Master" or "Chu(u)ka Taisen".
Essentially, the game is a simple horizontal shooter where the player gains power-ups to heal, increase their speed, or raise their attack, but the game also has shops that can be accessed by defeating certain enemies. New to this version of the game are new plot elements, a second playable character with slightly different abilities, "full tilt control" (which can speed up or slow down level progression) and a few basic options / features. The story is that two disciples, "Wukung" and "Mei Mei", are training under "The Great Teacher" to become Cloud Masters to protect Heaven and Earth from the demons of Hell and... that's pretty much it. Wukung desires to be a God, Mei Mei doesn't, enemies are fought and antics ensue.
This game garners rather low scores across the web, but not necessarily for reasons I agree with personally. I have no problem with the game being a budget title, I have no qualms with the relatively simple soundtrack, and I don't even care about the launch PS1-quality graphics or the inappropriate Western case art (though I'm sure it deterred people as it doesn't remotely reflect how the characters actually look), but the gameplay was butchered to the point of making the game nearly pointless. The original game wasn't exactly the most challenging SHMUP, but with new ultimate power-ups, the game is rendered nearly challenge-less as most bosses can be killed before they fire off a single shot. Even if you decided to go the "No-power" route, bosses still have simple patterns and most attacks are easy to avoid. For the sake of this video, I didn't just relentlessly mash the shot button so you could at least see a little bit of the bosses, but the game is a cakewalk even on the highest difficulty setting. This game is clearly designed for newcomers of the old-school SHMUP, but with no major unlockables, no real challenge and a completion time of about 30 minutes or so, there's nothing to really look forward to once you beat it the first time. This game is a modest and completely forgettable curiosity.
I wouldn't pay more than a few bucks for this game if you're going to add it to your collection. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.