Akimbo: Kung-Fu Hero Review

Game levels do have an interesting variety (from your generally perilous Caribbean Capers to the murky and treacherous place called the Living Forest), although that doesn't mean there are a lot of them (six to be precise). When you play for a while you will begin to ask yourself: Why do the levels seem too long at times? Well, they are long, but not in the sense of length or duration; to synchronize your kung fu moves to such a perfection that allows the precise elimination of every opponent in the nearby area is almost impossible. Basically, this improbability of wasting all of your opponents in one try prolongs the tediousness of having to restart every level (and not just that, but also having to take out all of the enemies time and again) - this is what makes the game seem much longer than it actually is. At the end of every level you will be encountering giant and hideous boss creatures that may appear tough at first, but are otherwise very easy to defeat (once you figure out their weak spots).

As for baddies, they usually come in the form of malevolent seashells, slugs, huge spiders, mosquitoes, skeletons, ghosts, and so forth. OK, to talk about the enemy's artificial intelligence is redundant since they're just small seashells that are programmed to jump around on a strict path and spit shiny pearls in your general direction. Other thingies like cavern-bats and crabs will annoy you both because of the fact that you'll have to punch a 'mere' thousand of the bastards, and cause of the irritating hissing sound they produce almost constantly.

Your most useful weapon against these bothersome animal thingies is, naturally, the handy kung-fu skill. The variety of moves might be the only plausible feature of this game - this means that Akimbo can perform a series of martial arts moves, which include low and high kicks, punches, all sorts of lethal combos etc (Lethal combos? More like 2D travesty - Ed). When he collects certain power-ups he temporarily gains various abilities such as flying-kicks, a higher jumping skill, and so on. What's even better is when Akimbo manages to obtain a few interesting items like the katana-sword or when he collects a fuse bomb, which allows him to obliterate a multitude of unfortunate opponents simultaneously. On the weaker side of gameplay, you will find that there are sometimes too many opponents while you have too very few lives to spare. Once you loose a life, Akimbo will respawn on the last place you've managed to raise a flag. If you haven't reached a flag that means you'll have to pass through the entire level from the very beginning. Also your foes respawn with you, so you'll have to kill them once again, 'FOR KICKS'.

Graphics is where Akimbo gets the lowest score. Fair enough, the enemy creatures look cute and it's almost a shame you have to ice them. Nonetheless everything else sucks, from a small and rather puny selection of levels and sublevels, to an environment that is relatively poor in detail. However, some of the monsters, animals, and other weird life forms you will find along the way, appear to be pre-rendered and pleasingly animated. But, what else can I say about the graphics for a game that literary belongs in 1992? If it's any consolation, the game at least has nice parallax scrolling technique. Ah crappers, it's no use, I remember games that were made almost eleven years ago on the Amiga and they looked twice better than Akimbo (something like Super Frog - you should just compare the music of Akimbo to Super Frog and you'll know what I'm talking about).

The music in Akimbo leads me to believe that throwing-up, can after all, be an eternally recurring phenomenon. The same thing can be said for some of the sound effects; the developers could've at least put some effort into a high-quality soundtrack and some realistic sound effects.

Akimbo was obviously made for 5-year-olds who enjoy such straightforward titles. In the end, I can only say that the game is neither difficult nor easy, it's just plain stupid and boring. If you think it's exciting to jump on moving rocks and take out deadly crabs by stomping on them with your bear feet, then you're welcome to do so. Although, I should warn you that if you're that determined to play, you'll need a great deal of patience and a lot of tranquilizers.

Btw, do we have any readers that are under the age of six? Didn't think so 2lions... So, why in the hell (You better shut up now associate - Ed).