KungFu Kickball is a multiplayer cartoony sports game that really has more in common with a 2-D version of soccer or basketball rather than kickball.  Choose from one of several stereotypical martial arts characters (old dude, karate guy, ninja lady, and more to unlock), and punch and kick a ball (or other players) so that it rings a bell on the opposite side of the field, like a goal.  Up to four can play (two on each team), and the game is available on most current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

In each round, you’ll be on a 2-D field with giant bells on either side.  Different fields have different obstacles that may make it harder to reach the goal.  Like basketball, the ball starts out in the middle and you can kick and punch it (as well as other players).  You can also hold down the attack buttons to perform special moves, but I found it easier just to use standard attacks.  One cool move you can do with one of the buttons is warp dash, which is handy when you want to get somewhere quickly or warp to the other side of the ball.  Whoever can score the most points in three minutes by ringing the bell with the ball on the opposite side of the field wins.

There are several modes of play.  You can do local and online matches.  In local play, you can do arcade mode where you challenge each character one at a time at different selectable difficulty levels.  You can also do single versus matches.  In Training you can learn how to play and do target practice with the ball.  You can edit the rules in Custom Matches, and even do tournaments.

Play control is very good and responsive, but I also had some problems with it.  Because your characters move so fast, sometimes it felt a little squirrely.  Plus I found it easier just to use regular attacks over the special moves, which felt a bit unnecessary.  Aside from Arcade Mode, there’s not much to do for single players, and the CPU opponents do get pretty hard later on, even on the easy difficulty selection.  But otherwise, KungFu Kickball is pretty fun as long as you have lots of friends to play it with.

Kid Factor:

KungFu Kickball is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.  You can punch and kick other cartoony players, and they can get knocked down sometimes but they get right back up in less than a second.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, but not necessary just to play.  Younger players may find it a bit difficult, though.

Tags: Game Reviews