Downtown Chic-Fu

Funny video games have a greater chance at being successful, even if their gameplay mechanics are not exactly top-notch. As long as you are having fun playing, the quality is less important when it comes to the rest of the game, although there are limits to this as well. Hence, humor is an important part in video games if it is done right.

Downtown Chic-Fu is a 2D fighting game with simple beat ‘em up mechanics and relatively fast-paced action, in which your goal is to defeat alien monsters using kung-fu. There’s no exploration and no platforming to slow you down, which means that the experience can be a tad short and repetitive, but you can still have a lot of fun with the action.

The story talks about a meteor that strikes a barn and kills everything in its path, except for a chicken that wasn’t there at the time. When it returns and tries to investigate the damage, the meteor causes a mutation in the chicken, which gives it super strength and the ability to use kung-fu like a real master. Hence, Chick-Lee decides to take on the aliens that spawned after the meteor crashed.

Each successful attack you perform increases your special ability bar, which in turn allows you to cast powerful strikes for extra damage. However, the mechanics are a bit too rough and unpolished, which is why the hits sometimes don’t register. On top of that, you can also hide behind objects in order to dodge attacks, but it would appear that you can remain stuck there due to bugs.

There are other inconveniences as well, such as freezes and errors that prevent you from enjoying the game, which is a bit of a bummer. As for the graphics, don’t expect anything groundbreaking, but the 2D environments are quite nice, even if they lack detail. The animations are pretty basic as well, but you can see that the developer tried to make them look as smooth as possible.

In the end, Downtown Chic-Fu can easily keep you busy for a while, but it needs more work before it can be declared a proper game. Hence, right now there are too many bugs and inconveniences to make the experience feel worthwhile.