Okinawa Rush

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Okinawa Rush is an Action-Platformer released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game casts players into the role of a macho martial arts master in a mythical Japanese setting who comes home to find his wife killed, kids kidnapped, and villagers captured, and takes it upon himself to get bloody revenge and kill a lot of ninjas along the way.

The presentation in this game makes use of some decent retro-style pixel art visuals reminiscent of classic arcade and 16-bit console games, which suit this game’s sensibilities pretty well. The game also features an absurd story seemingly ripped out of a 70s or 80s martial arts film, complete with horrible voiced lines (“I brought my FISTS to the party!”). For some, this will make this game difficult to take seriously, but for others, this will feel like a wonderful send-up of those classic martial arts films.

As for the gameplay itself, Okinawa Rush has a lot of potential – clearly a lot of work has been put into this game’s combat system, making sure it has plenty of variety and different moves to master. Unfortunately, the controls don’t feel nearly as responsive as they should, and oftentimes as you’re fighting, your character will seem to get a mind of his own and head off in a random direction doing stuff you never directed him to do. On top of this, the game seems to heavily depend on a counter system that is also not especially responsive, meaning you’ll take a lot of damage from attacks you could’ve sworn you countered. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the platforming in this game is atrociously bad, with your character’s movement in midair being strange and difficult to control with any sort of precision.

It’s a shame that Okinawa Rush fails so hard in its controls, because it really seems to have all the pieces in place to be a fantastic Arcade-style Action-Platformer. Unfortunately, those control issues make it difficult to enjoy this game as it was intended, and only those with the patience to deal with these issues will find this game to be worth their time.

tl;dr – Okinawa Rush is an Action-Platformer seemingly patterned after retro Arcade-style games and classic cheesy kung fu movies. There’s a lot of work that went into giving this game’s combat system plenty of depth and variety. Unfortunately, that work went to waste thanks to this game’s terrible, unresponsive controls and atrocious platforming. There’s a good game hidden under all these problems, but you’d need the patience of a true kung fu master to find it.

Grade: C-

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