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The online mode is quite complete as well, but not without its problems. Although some servers were smooth as silk even with 8 players, most public servers seemed to suffer from some real lag, especially when new players would join, which made for a frustrating and unenjoyable experience. A lot of this was just due to people not knowing how to configure their host properly, but for now I'd recommend hosting your own games and making them password-only and playing with friends. For now, the online play is limited to deathmatch and a soccer mini-game, but new modes are on the way.
Players will be able to customize their little Kung Fu warrior as well. Rag Doll Kung Fu features a simple mix-and-match style character editor for the novice as well as a handful of custom skins, but it also allows for the easy import of user-created content. To give this feature a test I loaded up the template in Photoshop and hacked up a picture of Seven Force from Alien Soldier. Within about a half hour, I was hurling Seven Force at some unsuspecting ninjas. So if you ever wanted to know what a Kung Fu fight between Richard Nixon and David Hasselhoff would look like on acid (and really, who hasn't), Rag Doll Kung Fu has your number. A world editor is also on the way, but unfortunately it's not accessible in the present version.
Rag Doll Kung Fu is unmistakably indie and undeniably professional, and given the amount of content, it's not hard to justify the paltry asking price of $15. Hopefully the online distribution method will continue to open doors to independent developers much in the same way that shareware revived the PC gaming market at the beginning of the 90s. Either way fans of quirk looking for the next Katamari Damacy would do well to look into RDKF. It's good, stupid fun, and a great time waster, which is all it ever hoped to be.
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