The Kore Gang Review
The Kore Gang puts you in control of three heroes in a robotic suit, ready to save the world from an invasion from creatures in the Earth’s core. A classic sense of 3D platforming and a silly sense of humor abound in this budget priced title. Unfortunately, this game is clearly cheap for a reason: The Kore Gang is packed with problems and just plain boring gameplay.
When the Krank brothers–evil tyrants that live in the center of the world–attempt to storm the Earth’s surface, three unlikely heroes team up using a powerful robot to save the world. The game has a distinctly goofy sense of humor that wouldn’t be out of place in any Saturday morning cartoon; as such the story follows an extremely basic story that tries to get by on its charm and comical approach. But sometimes the slapstick humor falls flat, and a lot of the jokes lack broad appeal–it’s a fine game for kids, but anyone else might find the wacky voices and forced one-liners pretty bland.
Not everyone you meet is a foe; you'll find a few friends along the way.
The gameplay is based around familiar platforming principles from the N64/PS1 era, but none of them are done particularly well here. Climbing, fighting, and gathering collectibles are all in abundance in The Kore Gang, but each carries with it its own set of problems. First of all, the catch in this game is that you switch between three different characters for different purposes–e.g. one character can climb while another fights. It’s a novel idea but in execution is sloppy and gimmicky; the game doesn’t benefit from this set-up, instead it only slows you down. The third character hardly even has any significant use outside of dull mini-games that fail to liven up the repetitive gameplay.
Simple platforming suffers from the weakest jumping ability ever and a combination of poor perspectives and depth perception, but more on the camera in a minute. It is literally hard to move which makes no sense for a game like this or any game made after 1990; there’s no sense of flow, no natural rhythm to your movements through the stage, which makes for a jerky, awkward experience–it feels as though you’re stumbling through the game. It doesn’t help that the level design is pretty uninspired most of the time and in other areas just badly planned, such as moving platforms where you can barely tell how far away they actually are.
Quite possibly the most crucial feature in a 3D platformer like this is easy, smooth camera control, which The Kore Gang sadly lacks. You are able to move the camera with the D-pad or center it behind you by pressing Z, but the movement is a little bumpy and, particularly with centering the camera, it is needlessly difficult to get the correct angle you need. It’s particularly annoying in this game because there are often platforms or climbing points that manage to hide just off screen, forcing you to fiddle with the choppy camera to progress. If the auto-camera was better at following your movements the game could have avoided a lot of unnecessary annoyance.
Monotonous button mashing makes combat unrewarding.
As for combat, the game limits itself to just a couple of attacks, which is fine, but the lack of variety wears thin quickly, especially since the enemies do show a small range of attacks and sometimes a more careful approach would have been useful. With no defensive powers and weak mobility, fighting most monsters devolves into running up to them and furiously attacking until they fall. This is especially noticeable during boss fights. These battles are ridiculously tedious, requiring painfully slow back and forth of walking away then walking forward to attack. Late in the game these fights grow increasingly frustrating as it seems bosses manage to use newer and better attacks while you’re still stuck with weak, slow punches. Instead of being exciting finales to mark off the end of certain stages, each boss fight is a chore and a bore.
In addition to the badly integrated camera, The Kore Gang features minimal use of motion controls, but when they pop up they prove to be every bit as poorly conceived as the camera. Repetitive motions that are not well recognized by the game are hardly acceptable at this point in the Wii’s life; thankfully, there are only a handful of areas that truly require these motion controls. Otherwise the basic controls work well–having three different characters keeps the button mapping simple if nothing else.
Imaginative scenery greets you in every stage of the game.
Visually, The Kore Gang isn’t pushing any technical boundaries, but there’s still a lot of charm and personality here. The environments may not be much for gameplay, but they look impressive with a distinctly cartoonish, colorful, imaginative quality to them. The thirty or so levels manage to show a good amount of variety in style, so each stage looks fresh. Cutscenes look even better, and with a bubbly, theme park-like soundtrack, the game’s presentation is one of its few redeeming features. However, the voice acting has some ups and downs–surprisingly, it is the weird, exaggerated voices that sound better than the normal, human voices of the protagonists.
The game errs on the short side–a good six hours or so of playing can easily finish the whole game. There are collectibles in each stage to encourage you to explore, but with how bad the platforming can be, that could end up being a bigger headache than it initially seems. You can replay levels to find these collectibles, but otherwise the game is significantly bare-boned.
The best that can be said of The Kore Gang is that it’s cheap. But I mean that in every sense of the word: the gameplay lacks polish to the extent that the game wavers between being poorly constructed or just plain bland. Sure you can pick it up for only $19.99, but even that much feels like a waste of money for a game that is dull at best and a struggle to play at worst.
Rating: 
