Tao Feng For Xbox

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Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus (Xbox)

MK's co-creator strikes back with his new studio's first fighting game.

Fighting games are a Japanese-dominated genre. That's not to say there aren't any Western-made fighters, but by and large 99% of the good ones comes from the Land of the Rising Sun. The only major exception has been the Mortal Kombat series, which was originally designed by John Tobias and Ed Boon in 1992. After a number of sequels, Tobias left Midway to found Studio Gigante, while Boon stayed behind and went on to create the recent Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Deadly Alliance has been getting lots of praise, finally bringing back some of the franchise's long-lost respect. Soon, it will be John Tobias' turn to return to the limelight with his own fighter, the Xbox-exclusive Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus.

Tao Feng's story is a bit vague at the moment. In a nutshell, good martial artists fight bad martial artists for the secret to immortality. However, I have a feeling it's going to be rather colorful and fleshed out, particularly if Tobias' Mortal Kombat history has any bearing on it. Say what you will about the games, but Mortal Kombat has a wonderful mythology built up around it, and I hope Tao Feng will offer a similarly rich universe.

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In any case, Tao Feng's most stunning asset is currently the graphics. They're just incredible, with highly-detailed models sparring at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. Cloth and hair are modeled realistically, and the environments you fight in are equally impressive. Fighters actually show damage as they take injuries, with progressively bloodier texture maps and even broken limbs. When it comes time to compare Deadly Alliance and Tao Feng, it will obviously be the latter that prevails in the graphics category.

Tao Feng's background interactivity sets a new high for the genre -- in fact, the game even has a button dedicated to background interactions. For example, one level is set in a gaming arcade, complete with arcade cabinets lining the walls playing fictitious video games. Poles dot the environment, and by pressing the interaction button while near one you can make your character swing around the pole and perform a powerful kick. You can also smack your opponent into the arcade machines, eliciting sparks and pyrotechnics and a nice bit of extra damage. Even the floor is destructable. The more brutal throws -- such as one character's piledriver -- will actually create chips and craters in the floor!

The character designs have a distinct American comic book feel to them, not far removed from the Mortal Kombat mold. They run the usual gamut, but their most memorable quality is currently the surplus of female flesh on display. These ladies redefine the phrase "scantily clad," and have the whole Dead or Alive physics thing going on up top as well. Shameless? Yep. Nice to look at? Well, yeah.

My only major question now is how the gameplay will turn out. I had a fun time fighting with one of the Microsoft fellows, but my time with Tao Feng was far too brief to really put it through its paces. The game's also very early, so only a few characters were selectable. There's definitely potential here, and the game has some interesting new ideas. With any luck, Tobias and company will come through with a winner and strike one more blow against the stigma surrounding Western-developed fighting games. ?