The Karate Kid: Street Rumble Reviews
Still, even if Street Rumble doesn’t do much to stand out from the crowd, it’s a decent brawler in its own right and worth checking out for fans of The Karate Kid. It’s not going to win at the All-Valley Tournament, but at least it put up more of a fight than Cobra Kai: Dojo’s Rising.
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.
If you're desperate for a new game in the genre, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble has something, but there are better examples available.
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.
Cobra Kai saved Karate Kid from drifting into irrelevance, plunging Daniel LaRusso and company into modern cultural consciousness. Sadly, there's nothing about The Karate Kid: Street Rumble that will save it from fading into obscurity. And based on the apathetic fisticuffs the game offers, that's probably a good thing.
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is a good, solid, retro-style scrolling beat 'em up that demonstrates not only a clear love for its source material, but for the heyday of the genre itself. Nonetheless, once you've dispensed with its twelve levels, you might struggle to find a compelling reason to go back for more.
A fun if basic brawler that fans of the Karate Kid and Cobra-Kai material are bound to enjoy.
A fun if basic brawler that fans of the Karate Kid and Cobra-Kai material are bound to enjoy.
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble isn't the best example of the side-scrolling beat 'em up genre but it's a welcome one nonetheless. There are some issues that detract from the fun a little, but on the whole this an entertaining adventure, especially when played with others, and there are plenty of modes and light RPG elements to add longevity.
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.
Are you ready to rumble? The Karate Kid Street Rumble is a decent beat 'em up game with a coop function up to four players. This is how you are going to be a real karate kid.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
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.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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.
Thanks to a lot of charm and reverence for the original trilogy of films, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble winds up being a really fun beat ’em up.
Much like a karate student who's mastered the basics but hasn't progressed to advanced techniques, The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is competent yet ultimately fails to leave a lasting impression.
Karate Kid: Street Rumble is a solid attempt at entering into the genre with a property that works well here. While it doesn’t add to the genre, and could be priced a tad too high, Street Rumble is exactly what it appears to be, a fun beat’em up brawler built around a movie property that many hold in high regard.
The Karate Kid as an IP in video games has an interesting history. The very first video game was all the way back in 1987 on the NES and for a very very long time that’s all we got. But the popularity of Cobra Kai on Netflix reignited popularity for the brand which clearly inspired developers to revisit the IP in the gaming space and we saw a Cobra Kai based video game in 2020 as well as a sequel in 2022. What do all three have in common? They’re all some manner of beat ’em up and now in 2024, another developer is taking on the challenge of making a Karate Kid scrolling beat ’em up with The Karate Kid: Street Rumble. How does it fare? Well, that’s an interesting discussion