It's gorgeous, immersive, and whether you play it like a slap-happy overweight Steven Seagal or as 'I know Kung-Fu' Keanu from the Matrix, you will still have a lot of fun and get a workout at the same time
From the moment I started practicing pressure point strikes and classic martial arts maneuvers, I could tell the developers truly cared about honoring the martial arts scene. Every hit and kick feels impactful, with distinct audio and visual cues letting you know exactly where your strikes are landing. Now, when you start playing the game, and I completely did that, you will play the game and feel like Steven Seagal in any of his sh*tty movies more than you will feel as Keanu Reeves from the Matrix.
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Yes, you can totally slap your way to victory in the easier difficulties and you will still have a lot of fun. But, in the harder difficulties, or heck even fighting against specific enemies in the easier difficulties, when you take your time and immerse yourself into playing as the game clearly intends you to do, it transforms into a whole another experience.
If you hit or strike a human body in real-life in different points, interesting things tend to happen. So if you finger poke the eyes well, your opponent's vision will get affected. Or if you sneak a punch right to the ribs, they will have difficulty breathing. The same goes for if you strike them directly into their throats. These moves are perfectly translated into Dragon Fist VR Kung Fu and if you want to succeed against your opponents in the higher difficulties, learning and hitting these pressure points becomes a must. At the same time, you must learn not only when to strike as they will try to block your moves and how many punches, kicks and palm strikes to throw as your character will lose their stamina, but also when to guard against their incoming attacks. You can get knocked down pretty quickly in this game, just like in real life, if you are not careful enough.
There are over 40 unique playable characters to choose from, each with their own fighting style and special moves. That means that there are more than 40 different enemies you have to fight against. The gameplay depth is seriously impressive. As mentioned each character has its own strength and weaknesess, meaning for example that you might have a strong punch, but also a weak sternum so while you use that specific character you need to be mindful of protecting your chest as a couple of hits there will get you knocked out. The other unique aspect for each character is their special or signature move, a special "ultimate" ability you can execute during fighting by doing a specific hand and arm pose and some of these abilities are wild. From being able to spawn Wolverine like claws, going invisible, launching a flying spinning saw blade-ish looking thing to paralyzing the arm of the opponent with a strike, spawning fireballs to even being able to use a freaking pistol.
Special attention, love and care has also been put into the many different locations or arenas where you will fight in. From temples located in a foggy bambo forest or a massive courtyard in front of a budist temple to an old boxing ring and an old-timey bar. There's also a dojo that looks practically identical to the one where Neo fought Morpheus in the Matrix. These locations are all unique, gorgeous to look at and they usually have some sort of a mini-game you can play like knife throwing or you can practice your punch and palm strikes against one of those wooden dummies that make you feel like you are Donnie Yen in IP Man.
Apart from the "solo campaign" where you can pick and choose any character and fight, mainly, 1v1 against the rest of the roster, you will unlock some other fun special modes like a survival mode where you fight an endlessly spawn-waving waves of ninjas, a special Halloween mode etc. You can also set up a CPU vs CPU match and just be a spectator.
Then there's also the whole multiplayer part which is a fantastic experience, with one big caveat. I got access to the game, day one, when it released on the Meta Quest store and I am extremely thankful to the publisher for offering me a code. I played the game every day during the launch week and I am so sad to say that I couldn't find a multiplayer match. I live in Europe and I tried in the morning, afteroon and even late at night and still nothing, no one was online to play the game. This sucks cause it's such a f*cking good VR fighting game. In fact it might be the best VR fighting game available right now and not only no one is playing it, but if you search for the game or for any reviews online, you will not find any apart from some Youtube videos. This is indeed a big problem not only for Dragon Fist VR Kung Fu, but also for all VR multiplayer titles on the Meta Quest that I've played lately, but this is a topic for another day.
Anyway, yesterday which was Saturday, I managed to find a lobby with a couple of players and I have to say that slapping kids, hearing them scream with a little friendly trash-talking here and there has never felt any better. The host decides what mode the lobby plays and it seems that all the modes that you can play solo are available here, but we're here to competitively slap each other so let's get on with it. Multiplayer supports up to 4 active players with 4 more players as spectators that will rotate once one of the active players gets knocked down. There's the free for all mode, but you can also play in a 2v2. You can also play the entire campaign in co-op with a friend and that is super cool.
Dragon Fist VR Kung Fu is the best VR physics-based melee fighting game I've played to date on my Quest 3. It's gorgeous, immersive, and whether you play it like a slap-happy overweight Steven Seagal or as 'I know Kung-Fu' Keanu from the Matrix, you will still have a lot of fun and get a workout at the same time. I do hope more people get this game and the servers get populated so that more people can slap each other and have a lot of fun while doing it. I strongly recommend this game. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a Quest 3 using a review copy provided by the publisher.Dragon Fist VR Kung Fu is available now on Meta Quest and PCVR.
