My Review of "Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn"

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is quite an interesting game. The ideal target audience for this game might be a little mixed but it's definitely not for everyone. It's not the best game but it is somewhat of an entertaining romp. I generally had fun playing this game despite its simplicity. Sometimes you just want to play a mindless game to kill some time.

For those that grew up in the 90's you may remember how larger than life Shaq was. He was pretty much everywhere: commercials, NBA games, TV shows, movies, music and yes video games. He had a forgotten game called Shaq Fu that came out on multiple systems at the time that included the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

I never got to play the game when it came out in 1994 because I didn't really have much interest in playing it. I remember it was a fighting game and I don't think there was much of a story behind it. When it first came out there was a lot of buzz on the game but it was quickly forgotten.

Fast forward to 2014 and a company by the name of Big Deez Productions create a crowdfunding campaign to create a new and updated Shaq Fu game. Much to everyone's surprise the crowdfunding campaign was a resounding success. The game was green lit to be created but it wasn't until 2018 that it was to be released.

Just as I didn't have any interest in playing the 1994 Shaq Fu game I didn't have much interest in playing the new iteration. Although this new version of the game is now a beat 'em up game instead of the original fighting game. They actually included a story but it's mostly comedy.

Still the comedy in this game is part of the charm of this game. Basically Shaq is an adopted Chinese baby in China that's been trained by his Yeye. Just before his Yeye dies he tells Shaq to fulfill his destiny as the chosen one to save the world from some sinister villain.

The story then goes all over the place and the game is very self aware of itself. I think most of the jokes that are in this game would be understood by people that know about the real Shaq. Some of the references might fly over your head otherwise.

They make a ton of references to his size and his nicknames over the years. There are also references to the products that he owns and the ones that he endorses. I also liked the fact that they actually put his songs in the game one of them was pretty popular in the hip hop world of the 90's. Yes that's right the famous Fu-Schnickens song "What's up Doc?" gets some air time in this game.

The problem is that this game can also appear very offensive to people. It has a lot of old school machismo references throughout the game. You have to look again to see if this game was released in 2018 or 1994. A lot of the enemies that approach Shaq are effeminate males and Shaq cracks jokes at their expense. It makes me wonder how much of an influence Shaq had on the game.

The confusion continues with the style of the art in the game. I can't complain about the art. It's very beautiful and colorful however it is very Saturday morning cartoon looking. This begs the question, who is the target audience of this game? A lot of the game has a lot of adult references and I don't know if this game is quite appropriate for kids. I guess they were just trying to make this game appeal to as many people as possible for the full amount of sales.

As for the game-play I would say that it's pretty good but not the best. You basically beat up enemies just like old school 90's arcade games. There's no diagonal attacks or anything like that it's all horizontal. This isn't a bad thing though. It is fun to beat up loads of enemies as they fill the screen. There's tons of fun animations when you beat them down. The game creators even gave Shaq some additional moves to prevent the game from becoming monotonous. Some people may find it boring but I grew up with games that played like this so it's right up my alley.

The problem with this is that sometimes there would be some slowdown and a few issues with collision detection. In addition to this the worst thing is that the game has a major glitch. There's a boss fight that constantly glitches. It's 2020 so the team had 2 years to fix the glitch and they never did it. That's too bad because after I experienced the glitch I was paranoid about the game glitching again for the rest of the game.

Still this isn't a long game and that's a relief for me because I don't really like long games. I bought the game when it went on sale so it was worth the price of purchase of $6. Any higher than that and I would say that you're wasting your money.

Overall, I was okay with the game because it was only $6. It's basically like a movie rental. It's some old school fun with a few funny elements to it. The problem is that it can be offensive to people and in 2020 that's not so cool. I would give this game a 6 out of 10. I will only play this game once and then delete it afterwards.