The Karate Kid: Street Rumble

For those who enjoy the Karate Kid movies and Cobra Kai TV series, there's fun to be had with this. It's simple but fairly effective, looks really nice, and has a few minigames to break up the action. Its combat can be an enjoyable economy of building gauges and pounding out super attacks amidst tap combos - but it tends to simmer rather than cook. The boss battles (with mostly Johnny Lawrence) are a little too placid for our liking, although the set-ups are pretty cool, especially when you find yourself in familiar movie territory. On the whole, it's nice to rumble with hordes of high school bullies, but once it's finished there's not a great deal to encourage repeat plays except the local multiplayer. Wax on, wax off, it's up to you.

Street Rumble isn’t terrible, but it’s not good either. Sure, it looks good, but the music is boring, the gameplay is bog standard, it has serious design flaws, and in a lot of cases, it just isn’t interesting. Yeah, there’s an arcade mode, boss rush, and so on, but you need to beat the story mode to unlock them, and if I hadn’t been playing this for review, I would have stopped around thirty minutes in. Beat ‘em up fans deserve better. Licensed games deserve better. And The Karate Kid deserves better than to be resurrected as a coat of paint used to gussy up a mediocre beat ‘em up.

A fun if basic brawler that fans of the Karate Kid and Cobra-Kai material are bound to enjoy.

The Karate Kid franchise has all the elements required to make a fun game, but The Karate Kid: Street Rumble falls short of the fun factor. It looks fantastic, but is an average beat ‘em up game, at best, it takes around 2 to 3 hours to complete, so it severely lacks substance. The genre is filled with better alternatives, particularly with beat ’em ups being increasing in popularity over the last few years. The Karate Kid: Street Rumble aims to land the perfect crane kick, but it’s taken out by a cheap leg sweep.

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is actually a decent and fun gaming experience. Easy to pick up and play, but hard to master thanks to its surprisingly deep combat system, RPG like mechanics and replay value. While character movement can feel a bit slow and the crazy difficulty spike 1/4 of the way in, it’ll easily fill your beat’em up void. But given its steep price tag for something that can be finished in about a 2 hour single sitting, might wanna wait for a sale.

A solid beat-em-up take on the classic movie with nice character variety and enjoyable gameplay while it lasts

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble almost has what it takes to be a classic beat ‘em up. I hope the team at Odaclick continues to update the game with more content and fixes some issues above, such as the core gameplay mechanics, which is a big issue. The game is still worth a try if it goes on sale if you are a massive fan of the genre and the films. For now, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble needs a bit more “wax on, wax off” action.

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is the best game in the franchise. That's not a very high goal to reach, but it does its job. Its beautiful graphics and simple gameplay are its greatest asset, and playing with friends makes the experience even more fun, providing hours of fun. However, the simplicity can get tiring after a while: the lack of genre foundations (like picking up weapons and a more challenging difficulty), no online co-op, and little representation of the franchise make this just another game that exists, without its own identity beyond “that Karate Kid game.” As a big fan of the series, I'm satisfied but feel like there could be more.

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble may not be the greatest beat 'em up you were hoping for, but it's still fun to play. Those who loved the movie will find many nostalgic moments since all the characters' personalities are kept intact in the game's presentation.

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is just alright. There’s nothing terrible about it, and there’s nothing that makes it truly stand out. Even if its gameplay is floaty, it is so damn easy you won’t even care about it. It’s full of content related to the first three movies in the franchise, but it doesn’t properly follow the trilogy’s “from zero to hero” premise, making it feel less like a tie-in and more of a “what if” fanservicey fest than an accurate tie-in.