An uneven game that totally sweeps the leg – Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising Quick Review

The original Karate Kid video game is somewhat infamous thanks to the profane skewering of one Angry Video Game Nerd, but that game came out in the '80s on the NES. Can over thirty years of game development experience and technological upgrades finally deliver an interactive Karate Kid experience that is worthy of the franchise?

Let’s find out with Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising, the latest game based on the hit Netflix series, which spins off from the classic ’80s Karate Kid movies. I’ve only watched the first season myself, and I didn’t play the first Cobra Kai game, so I went in with zero idea what to expect here. Hopefully, something worthwhile...

THE STORY

Chozen, the villain from The Karate Kid Part II, is now a trusted ally and tells the tale of three warring dojos: Eagle Fang led by Johnny Lawrence, Cobra Kai led by douchebag John Kreese, and Miyagi-Do headed up by good ol’ Daniel LaRusso. The choice of a dojo began my journey to recruit the most powerful team (from the various characters on the show) as I also mastered that dojo’s particular fighting style. Then I had to battle in an arcade brawler fashion to solidify my dojo’s legacy in the All Valley Karate Grand Championship Tournament.

PLATFORMS

Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising is available on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PlayStation 5. I played the PC version via Steam. I encountered several glitches and framerate stutters. More on these issues below.

TIME PLAYED

I put a three-and-half hours into Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising, which allowed me to complete one of the dojo storylines (Miyagi-Do), and test out a couple of the other game modes, Cobra Classics and All Valley Tournament.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• True to the source material. From what I can tell, all the actors from the show have reprised their roles in this game, and in terms of the overarching narrative, it sticks rather close as well—especially in the Cobra Classics mode which had me playing actual fight scenes from various seasons of the show.

• Cool special attacks. All of the characters can bust out rather spectacular special moves that made me think that I was playing a Naruto game and not a game based on a show that’s set in the real world. Still, they did make me go “whoa” more than a few times. So there’s that.

• Variety. There are several game modes on top of the main story mode: Survival, which just has you kicking the crap out of wave after wave of enemies; Cobra Classics, which, as I mentioned, makes scenes from the actual show playable; and All Valley Tournament, which is basically a one-on-one fighting game with Karate Kid and Cobra Kai characters. In my mind, Cobra Classics is the best of these modes.

WHAT SUCKS

• Overall polish. As I mentioned above, I ran into several weird glitches while playing Cobra Kai 2. Characters would vanish in the middle of fights as would objects I would pick up so it looked like I was an idiot swinging a handful of nothing. Also the framerate would chug during sweeping camera movements and when fast action was going down on the screen...and as one might expect, there’s a good bit of fast action in a martial arts game.

Two other fun things that occurred in the short time I was playing Cobra Kai 2:

1. One of the final enemies in a level got hung up on a locker and couldn’t attack me...and I couldn’t attack him because I was restricted by an invisible barrier. I had to restart that level from the beginning.

2. On the PC version, there didn’t seem to be a way to shut the game down—no option to “Quit to Desktop”' in the main menu or anything, so I had to pull out the ol’ “CTRL/ATL/DELETE” magic to make it go away.

• Wonky camera angle. The default setting of the camera is off—especially in tight corners. I felt like I needed to strain my neck upwards at times to see where I should go next. This can be adjusted slightly in the settings (which you aren’t told about, and I just happened to stumble upon), but I found that it doesn’t help all that much.

• Imprecise controls. To be fair, I’m only talking about one mode here, the All Valley Tournament mode, which is for all intents and purposes a one-on-one fighting game. Unfortunately, it’s a one-on-one fighting game with the most floaty, loose controls I’ve ever experienced. I played as Johnny, and it literally felt like he was made of fluff trying to kick through molasses. Did NO ONE test this damn game?

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

If you are a huge fan of the Cobra Kai series then, yes, you’ll find some enjoyment here, but everyone else should wait until they patch this game before they play it. Also the developers at Flux Games should seriously consider making both the Cobra Classics and All Valley Tournament modes stand-alone games and just ditch the beat-em-up story mode altogether. It’s a crime of the highest order that there hasn’t been a fighting game based in the Karate Kid universe as of yet, and the All Valley Tournament mode here approaches that, but it really needs better, tighter controls to be considered a real contender.

💬 What are your thoughts on the Cobra Kai Netflix series? Also what are your thoughts on licensed games based on movies and TV shows? Yay or nay? Let me hear what you have to say down in the comments below!