Martial Arts have fascinated people for as long as people have been figuring out new ways to punch each other in the face. As Hong Kong action movies evolved into a genre all on their own, so did video games don their Gi(s). From early games like Kung Fu on the NES, to movie-tie-ins like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Martial Arts video games are like as death or taxes; pretty much guaranteed.

You can't see Hero and not want to learn how to do some of what Jet Li can do. — You can't see *Hero* and not want to learn how to do some of what Jet Li can do.

But what makes for good Martial Arts in video games? What are some challenges to designing good Martial Arts systems in games? What games stand out as good examples of Martial Arts systems?

Martial Arts are complex and worthwhile to learn in real life, but nobody wants to play a game where you have to go through grueling hours of practice. At the same time, if fighting were too easy, you wouldn’t experience the power fantasy that games provide. An in-game Martial Arts system should start you out with some degree of knowledge and simplify moves without making it too easy. Martial Arts moves should move rapidly, because watching Bruce Lee whip around his Nunchaku nearly faster than the eye can see is awesome and we all want to be Bruce Lee. Moreover, we’ve all seen somebody break a board with Karate or a bunch of stone tiles with their head so the moves should feel like they’re powerful. So, we’ve got easy to use, fast, and powerful.

For the most part, the Martial Arts mechanics in Sleeping Dogs are fantastic. Sleeping Dogs is a story of an undercover cop, Wei Shen, slowly losing himself in his dual life with kickass ass-kicking. Already trained in a variety of Martial Arts styles, Wei hits enemies with a variety of strikes, grapples, and throws to take them down. Nothing is more satisfying than chaining a bunch of moves together to defeat a large number of opponents. Many of the attacks give off some suitably wince-worthy sound effects (the knee stomp in particular). Learning more moves as the game goes on makes you feel like you’re increasing in skill even though Wei has powerhouse capabilities from the minute you start the game.

Sleeping Dogs paints a picture of the kind of seedy underworld that movies like Internal Affairs made famous. — *Sleeping Dogs* paints a picture of the kind of seedy underworld that movies like *Internal Affairs* made famous.

Despite the fantastic the sound effects and animation, there has too many trump moves that make you undefeatable. You can solely use counters, which are unblockable. Enemies will flash red when attacking, defeating the element of surprise and removing a great deal of difficulty. You can spam certain high-damage moves and run through most enemies like a hot knife through butter. The Dim Mak, for instance, takes away half of an enemy’s health and knocks them down, opening them up to stomping or an easy grapple.

Jade Empire is an RPG full of twists and turns, set in a fictional version of Ancient China complete with magic, weapon-fighting, and Martial Arts. You upgrade your health, Chi, and Focus as well as various aspects of your martial styles, like the speed of your attacks or their power. Combat takes place in real-time and you can switch between styles at will. Each attack style has a combo attack, a strong attack, a block, and an area attack. While easy to use individually, switching effectively between styles and the different kinds of moves each style requires a little experimentation to get them all to work together. All of the styles are quick and chainable, with certain moves setting up “Harmonic Combos” which make enemies drop health, chi, or focus pickups.

The fights in Jade Empire are certainly fast and there's plenty of strategy to employ, it feels like there's something missing. — The fights in *Jade Empire* are certainly fast and there's plenty of strategy to employ, it feels like there's something missing.

However, for the most part, attacks don’t feel like they do much to enemies. Strong attacks will knock enemies back, but regular combo attacks will just irritate most. While in part due to the RPG nature of the game, perhaps Jade Empire could have made basic combos harder to complete (maybe only correctly timed attacks can lead to combos?), but given combos the ability to drop and enemy to their knees or knock them back? As it stands, the Martial Arts in Jade Empire feels like using a Styrofoam hammer instead of a real one.

The fast-paced Martial Arts in Lugaru: The Rabbit’s Foot are easy to learn, but hard to master. Lugaru is a game about ninja kung-fu rabbits who have to fight wolves. There’s a plot there as well, but really, I’m still hung up on the kung-fu rabbit thing. Unlike Sleeping Dogs and Jade Empire, you cannot chain together moves. If you’re standing still, you’ll do a double punch. If you’re crouching, you’ll do a sweep kick. If you’re running, you’ll do a round house kick. You counter enemy moves by pressing the counter key at the exact right moment. If you keep repeating an attack, enemies counter you back, and if you time it right, you can counter their counter. With awesome ragdoll effects, you sweep an enemy’s legs out from under them, double punch them in midair, then watch them go flying. If you time your jump kick right, you blast an enemy backwards and hear the rock crack as they hit it. By the end of the game you feel like a badass rabbit who has trained, learned, and become a master of Martial Arts. Lugaru’s story is short and forgettable, but there’s no denying that its Martial Arts are fast, powerful, and fun to learn.

Rabbits and Kung-Fu work oddly well together and I'm not sure why.

Martial Arts are hard to learn in real life. Video games let you experience a little of what it’s like, without the getting knocked around or the years of practice. The best games make you practice a little, but only so that you feel like you’ve earned your skill. Now, go practice your forms, grasshopper.

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