Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

A few years ago, GQ magazine asked Shaquille O'Neal why he decided to star in theatrical duds like Steel and Kazaam. His response was both honest and obvious: "I was a medium-level juvenile delinquent from Newark who always dreamed about doing a movie. What am I going to say, no?"

As far as I can tell, this is how Shaq made most of his business decisions in the 1990s. He always wanted to be a rapper, so he made a rap album. He wanted to be in a video game, so he jumped at the first offer that came his way. He may not have been a great actor, musician or video game hero, but who is going to turn down the opportunity to live out these childhood dreams? Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is a new game that attempts to right some of the wrongs and poke fun at Shaq's over-the-top career. And while it certainly offers a few genuine laughs and solid gameplay, I found myself a little disappointed (and kind of uneasy) about this long-overdue reboot.

It's probably worth mentioning at the top that this is not a sequel to the 1994 game Shaq Fu. It doesn't have any of the same characters, story or moves. Hell, you don't even play Shaquille O'Neal in this game. Get this: A Legend Reborn centers on an orphaned boy who is raised in a Chinese village by a wise old man with a dark secret. That boy, of course, grows up to be a 7 foot tall man who would be perfect as a center in the National Basketball League.

Instead of becoming a rich and famous pro-athlete, this Shaq ends up going on a mission to assassinate a bunch of demonic celebrities. It's the kind of mission that sends him all over the world, including the streets of Bel Air and a dangerous sugar-fueled water park. Along the way he'll fight off parody versions of Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson and even the Kardashians. He'll also poke fun at his failed movie career, commercial gigs, rap music and more. It all leads to one of the most meta beat 'em ups I've played in years.

The truth is, I was surprised by how much I liked Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn after the first stage. I felt like they got the sense of humor right, the combat was fast, the gameplay was more responsive than the original game and the graphics were pretty good. I started to get excited that this game might just be so dumb that it's actually brilliant. But A Legend Reborn is not brilliant, and the game seems to go out of its way to curb stomp all of those positive first impressions.

At its core, this is a pretty standard beat 'em up with a bunch of comedy bits thrown in. The problem is that most of those comedy bits happen in that first stage, so the rest of the journey just feels like another mid-tier brawler. You fight a bunch of the same looking enemies, mash buttons until everybody is knocked out and then repeat the process a few seconds later. They end up either running out of pop culture references or repeating the same jokes over and over after the second stage, and that brings any momentum this game has to a grinding halt.

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It doesn't help that these particular pop culture references all feel dated and worn out. I mean, when was the last time Paris Hilton was relevant? Mel Gibson's drunk driving arrest happened a dozen years ago and was ruthlessly mocked by every late night talk show host you can name, yet this game treats the "Sugar Tits" barb as if it happened a few weeks ago. And it's not just the bosses, but all of the jokes and references.

There's a point towards the end where somebody refers to Shaq as a tall guy who is in his "early thirties." Shaq us 46, which made me wonder if maybe this is supposed to be set back in the early 2000s. That would make the outdated jokes make a little more sense, I suppose. But even then, there are things that happen throughout the game that suggest that it's happening in present day, so the whole thing is really strange.

And when it comes right down to it, that's how I would describe the story as a whole. I'm fine with this being a reboot and Shaq playing something other than his basketball persona. It's a weird choice to have him grow up in a different country and have him identify as being Chinese, but I'm willing to go with it. But there comes a point in A Legend Reborn where the game's version of the KKK starts making racist jokes aimed at Shaq's Chinese ethnicity. Honestly, this left me feeling a little uneasy. There's really no reason to make Shaquille Chinese, and it often seems like the game only did it to make a bunch of supposedly edgy jokes and dredge up lame stereotypes.

Once the game runs out of jokes about Shaq's missteps, the humor loses its way. It becomes mean-spirited and nasty, which isn't helped by the fact that Shaq's task is to literally travel around the world killing celebrities. But it's actually worse than that, because most of the late-game gags are simply lazy. For example, there's a bit in one stage where Shaq breaks the fourth wall and demands the developer get rid of the endless bad guys. This would have been the perfect time to turn Shaq Fu into a puzzle game, kart racer or something equally unexpected as a lark. But what do they do? They throw us into yet another arena fight where your goal is to kill 200 people.

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Oh, that reminds me; occasionally Shaq will turn into a cactus. It's lame.

I would also like to note that Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is way too easy. With the exception of one boss, I had no problem fighting my way through the game by simply mashing buttons. It's also buggy, as I found out when one of the boss fights simply stopped working. Everybody looked like they were walking in place and I couldn't control anything. Thankfully, this only happened to me once.

Of all the things I never thought I would say, I have to hand it to whoever put the soundtrack together. The rap tracks are appropriately silly and usually well-timed. But what really sells it are the parody tracks that accompany the different bosses. Sometimes they are subtle, other times they'll hit you over the head with their obviousness. Either way, the parody songs are probably my favorite part of this game.

As a beat 'em up, Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is fine. The gameplay is fast-paced, but nothing you haven't seen a thousand times before. Its real strength is the humor, which seems to go from hilarious to hateful in just a few levels. A lot of the gags and bosses made me groan, and I feel like the Shaq origin tale is a bit of a misstep. As flawed as the original game was, I think it's still a better game.