Reviews

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble | Review

Nick "Shpeshal Nick" Baker September 20, 2024Last Updated: December 9, 2024

1 4 minutes read

Wax On!

The Karate Kid as an IP in video games has an interesting history. The very first video game was all the way back in 1987 on the NES and for a very very long time that’s all we got. But the popularity of Cobra Kai on Netflix reignited popularity for the brand which clearly inspired developers to revisit the IP in the gaming space and we saw a Cobra Kai based video game in 2020 as well as a sequel in 2022. What do all three have in common? They’re all some manner of beat ’em up and now in 2024, another developer is taking on the challenge of making a Karate Kid scrolling beat ’em up with The Karate Kid: Street Rumble. How does it fare? Well, that’s an interesting discussion.

Wax Off!

Much like TMNT Shredder’s Revenge and Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble takes the “old school” approach by sticking to the pixel art inspiration for it’s visual style and the game does a really fantastic job of being faithful to the IP in a number of ways.

Street Rumble contains a whopping 18 levels (this includes bonus “mini game” stages) which cover the story arc of all three movies and it does a really respectable job of conveying that throughout both the in-stage conversation sequences as well as the hand drawn cartoon styled cut scenes.

As someone who grew up on the Karate Kid movies, I can’t lie I got a genuine kick out of many of the mini-game bonus stages that had you doing fun stuff like catching flies with chop sticks or practicing your “crane kick”. Much of which are also throwbacks to the NES original. Fans of the franchise will no doubt appreciate the fan service developer Odaclick Game Studio has infused into the game.

Major characters both good and bad are all included here with the four playable “good” characters being Daniel, Mr. Miyagi, Ali Mills and Kumiko (from Part II) and throughout the game you’ll cross paths with all the enemies you’d expect like Johnny, John Kreese and Terry Silver. They genuinely have done a great job in translating – I guess, the “universe” of Karate Kid into a scrolling beat ’em up.

Are you the best?

I also admire the developer for trying something a little different in the genre with The Karate Kid: Street Rumble. While “special meters” aren’t a new mechanic in scrolling beat ’em ups, using them as a shield certainly is. For those of us who love to do “clean” no hit runs in our beat ’em ups, it was really neat to see a new mechanic that allows for some forgiveness or the avoidance of the odd cheap shot by the enemy.

It also makes the in game challenges like “clear a level without losing any life” something that’s generally less frustrating to achieve. At least, it should be less frustrating…

The issue here is that the game isn’t overly fun to play. Why? Because the controls/gameplay are a bit sloppy and imprecise. Which is then exacerbated by the fact that the game demands precision placement from you. It wants you in a specific spot to be able to hit an enemy. It wants you in a very specific spot to be able to hit a breakable item. But then it doesn’t give you the controls to be able to meet those demands.

So much so that I legitimately thought my controller was either broken or dying. In almost 5 years of reviewing game, this was the first time I booted up two other games in the same genre and played them just to triple check my controller wasn’t the issue. Nope, controller was fine. This game just doesn’t feel very good to me which is really unfortunate.

Speaking of breakable items, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scrolling beat ’em up give you so many breakable items in the environment that have absolutely nothing in them. Health and power up pick ups are ridiculously scarce. To the point where I had to wonder why there were so many breakable items to begin with. Especially when the game makes you struggle to even hit them.

Sweep the leg!

The combat has some reasonable depth in The Karate Kid: Street Rumble, with super attacks and juggling mechanics combining to allow for some decent crowd control options. You’ll also upgrade and add additional attack options as you upgrade your character. But the aforementioned control issues simply undo what should have been a really great package and make crowd control a bit of pain.

If the game isn’t fun to play, then the length becomes a chore, not “great value”. If it’s not fun to play, you don’t have much incentive to upgrade your characters or unlock all the extra modes that come with completion.

On the characters, while they’ve given you four to choose from, Daniel is the only one worth choosing. Ali and Kumiko have not great aerial combat options and their hand to hand combat isn’t good enough or strong enough to want to choose them over Daniel to make up for it. Mr. Miyagi’s hand to hand combat isn’t very good and his aerial options are only marginally better than Ali and Kumiko’s. It all really means you’ll just wind up playing the game with Daniel who is superior in every way imaginable.

It’s a really unfortunate development for me that I just couldn’t find much enjoyment in the simple act of actually just playing this game. It undermined the quality of everything around it and the issue is, gameplay/combat/control is the most important aspect of this genre and if it’s not up to snuff, then the rest falls down around it.