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Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain Review
Written by Chris Buffa on Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Old school beat-em-up action, neat upgrades, cool weapons, you can pick up cars, funny one-liners, sharp and colorful graphics.
Hard to dodge objects and avoid enemy fire using the phone's control nub, we couldn't get the camera feature to work, too short.
Chuck Norris, star of such films as Forced Vengeance, Firewalker and Sidekicks now has his own mobile game, Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain. Published by Gameloft, this over the top and brutal action adventure thrusts the red-haired hero into a battle for freedom, where lots of guns, special moves and good old fashioned Chuck Norris ass whippings are the only things that'll rescue democracy from evil's drooling maw. Thankfully, A Force of One is enough to prevent Invasion U.S.A.
Bring on the Pain is a 2-D side scrolling beat-em-up, similar to such classics as Streets of Rage 2 and Final Fight. You, as Chuck Norris, will explore a myriad of different environments, starting in the jungle and moving on to the United States and other locations, all of which feature small armies of heavily armed bad guys. Naturally, none of them stand a chance against Norris' Silent Rage, and after discovering that they abducted POWs, he vows to rescue those Missing in Action and teach his enemies An Eye for an Eye.
This is good old fashioned video game fun, as you plow through the jungle shredding trees with an assault rifle, tricking enemies to walk into landmines, picking up a truck and slamming it onto your adversaries and even beating up a helicopter. In addition, you'll punish evildoers with your bare fists, kick them and unleash a myriad of special maneuvers that you can purchase from the game's dojo, including an exploding roundhouse kick and an air cartwheel that bears a striking resemblance to the cyclone kick in the NES game Double Dragon 2. There's just a tremendous amount of variety, both in the weapons as well as the enemies. You'll destroy a tank and even take it to real world dictators Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il, and all of this is captured in crisp and detailed 2-D. Wood splinters, large bosses crowd the playfield, you can toss enemies at the screen like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for Super Nintendo and when you leave the game alone, Chuck does pushups to keep himself busy.
It's a great package, but the game's not perfect. Dodging falling objects and enemy fire is annoying, since it's difficult maneuvering Chuck with a phone's control nub. Enemies also have a habit of disappearing off screen, which is nothing new for these types of games, but bothersome since you need to wait for them to come back. Finally, we were unable to get the Camera Feature to work. It lets you take photographs of people and put their heads on the game's enemies. We love the idea. We just couldn't get the phone's camera to take pictures.
Although that feature was Missing in Action and it only takes a couple of hours to beat the game, we enjoyed playing Bring on the Pain. Gameloft succeeded in merging one of Hollywood's most iconic action stars with slick, fist punching shenanigans. Just remember that "there is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist."
