Balls of Fury Review

By Daniel Acaba

I don't know if it is possible to not wince at the mere implication of what this game represents. A video game based on a movie is already a very dicey proposition for most gamers, but a video game based on this movie? A movie that is essentially a "dumb comedy" that not only parodies the storyline of the Bruce Lee great "Enter the Dragon" but does so with an insanely silly cast of characters and focuses on ping-pong of all things. Dear god, what were they thinking? They should have been thinking about passing on this game but instead here we are.

Balls of Fury is the story of Randy Daytona, a washed up ping-pong prodigy. Seeking revenge against the man who killed his father he joins up with an FBI agent and an old blind man who re-teaches him how to play the game. Through this training he hopes to finally fight, and defeat, Feng, the head of an underground, illegal, ping-pong tournament. More than just another ping-pong tournament the stakes in Fengs' tournament are literally life or death, costing you your life if you lose.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, Balls of Fury the game has more than just this half baked story to play through. There is the Story Mode, where you will play as Randy Daytona through his youth and all the way to his fight to take down Feng, but that is only one of four modes. There is also Exhibition, Arcade and Tournament modes to be chosen from.

Exhibition is essentially a single match where you pick any available character and play them against one opponent where you set the rules to your liking, such as amount of points to a win and so on. Arcade mode is almost like playing a fighting game; you choose your character and play through a succession of nine fights to win. As you progress up through the rounds the enemies get slowly, but noticeably, harder. Lastly there is Tournament mode where either four or eight computer controlled or human players can compete to be top ping-pong player.

This likely doesn't sound all that different from most other sports games, and it isn't. What is supposed to set it apart is the "wacky" ping-pong based setting and while it succeeds to a degree the gameplay itself isn't really all that interesting.

By holding the Wii remote with the d-pad and A button face upwards and swinging it side to side you basically emulate swinging a paddle. However there are a few variations on this that only help to further give you the feel of playing the game. If you swing the remote upwards you will add lift to the shot, floating it, and if you swing it downwards then you will bash the shot, sending it flying at your opponent faster. You can also hold down the B button to add spin to the ball which causes it to fly off erratically when it hits the table. By mixing the left to rights with the floater and slam moves you can control where the ball goes to try and outpace your opponent.

Also thrown into the mix are "power" moves and taunts that are designed to help you beat your opponent by distracting them and bending the laws of physics to your advantage. Taunts cause your opponents screen and controller to shake, hopefully distracting them so that you will score a point. These can only be done once every so often since they must recharge. The power moves can be done either as a power serve or power shots and they vary by what character you use. They can range from teleporting the ball around the table at random, causing it to zigzag around or even flying at your opponent rapidly while on fire. These moves are recharged by volleying the ball back and forth with your opponent.

While all of this sounds vaguely interesting, especially in a bargain-priced game, it doesn't play out very well since this game is plagued by a number of problems.

First of all the controls, while standard for the Wii, stink. For some reason they aren't very responsive and there is a tendency for the game to not register moves. Many times I would be moving the controller in an attempt to finish off a volley only to have my paddle remain motionless. If not for this then the controls would be competent and fairly easy to learn and use.

So long as you play the game exclusively multiplayer then you will probably enjoy it. Playing with a friend lets you avoid this game's greatest flaw: the AI. It is nearly impossible to get balls past them most of the time but then others they will just stand there and let you score. Worse than this is the fact that your power shots and taunts do little, usually nothing, to the computer controlled players but they sure work on you. The fact that you can burn through four special attacks trying to get a shot past them only to get grounded when they return fire in one shot is really agitating. But then all of a sudden one spin shot later and they just watch it go by... ugh. The worst.

The only things worse than the gameplay here are the graphics and audio. All of the characters look bland and nothing like their real-life counterparts. The only one even remotely close is the Hammer who kind of sort of looks like they might have tried to make him look like Patton Oswalt but the rest are pretty bad, even Feng. The backgrounds are boring and devoid of life even when you are in an arena.

Possibly the only thing more obnoxious than the graphics are the sound effects. There is little sound in this game except for the bouncing sounds of the ball on the table. Other than that all you get is some piddling music that you really could do without and the obnoxious repeated taunts. Nothing really throws you off like complete silence with only annoying vocals such as "Tell your mom to pull the car around." and other such "memorable" lines that I could have done without.

With a few unlockable characters to its name that you can get in about two hours of play there is little to really keep you entertained here. Keeping in mind the fact that you could get this same sort of gameplay out of Wii Sports tennis then there is no reason to waste time with this one. It isn't funny, even though the movie got some chuckles from me, and the bland sound and atrocious graphics seal the fate of this game. Even a rental is too good for this.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 15%. Nothing this game has to offer is all that special besides some spastic AI and horrendous graphics.