Parents. Always trying to do the right thing for their kids, crushing childish dreams with their cold hard reality...it just isn't fair! This is especially true if you're a giant panda named Po, whose day-dreams of kung fu mastery are karate chopped in lieu of a stable career in the family noodle business by his dad. It's doubly unfair when the legendary Furious Five - the most awesome kung fu masters in all the land – are about to duke it out to find out which one will become the even more awesome and legendary Dragon Warrior. And Po has to work! Of course we all know he'll go watch the tournament instead, and through a comedic series of errors, wind up getting tapped by Master Oogway to become the Dragon Warrior, and this is where the adventure really begins!

The Kung Fu Panda game follows the plot of the film pretty closely, as these movie tie-in games tend to do. Over the course of the 13 level adventure you'll revisit a number of key scenes from the movie, as well as play through a few scenarios created just for the game that fill in some of the blanks. It's so close to the formula that you can almost check the boxes as you play along, yet surprisingly, Kung Fu Panda defies expectations by being pretty damn good for a cash-in game!

Admittedly the film's premise translates to game form almost flawlessly: take a bunch of crazy kung fu fighting animals, pit them against other mammalian martial artists and then let them go nuts! Throw in some platforming gameplay and a stir in a dash of mini-games and you've got the perfect recipe really. But Kung Fu Panda's charm helps it rise above the generic box-checking gameplay you'd probably expect from this sort of title, because the combat is fun, the characters are funny and the level design is varied enough that mashing those buttons doesn't get old fast.

In fact the combat is surprisingly solid – X and Y are your light and heavy attacks respectively, block with the trigger, jump with A and use B to pull off some special moves. You can also unleash counter-attacks when blocking, and if you land enough hits you'll boost your combo meter which allows you to lay some serious smack down when you fill it up. There's only a few combos but they're easy to pull off and the simplicity is tempered by the game throwing lots of low level enemies at you so combat is fast and frenetic. It's no Ninja Gaiden 2 of course, but given that Kung Fu Panda is aimed primarily children, that's probably a good thing!

Where Kung Fu Panda excels however is in its presentation: Luxoflux have been around for awhile and know how to make a good game, and they've gone to lengths to ensure that the camera works well, the game looks great and that the game is stable and easy to play. It all sounds like no-brainer sort of stuff, but with so many of these movie tie-in games still managing to fail at one or all of these criteria, Po the Panda stands proud atop a mound of fallen foes as polished and eminently playable. There's nothing particularly new or innovative about the gameplay or the combat, but it achieves everything it sets out to do and really is greater than the sum of its parts.

Naturally it does help that Kung Fu Panda is a good looking game; all the characters look great – the fur effects in particular are exceptional – and the levels are big and spacious with scope for exploration, without being overwhelming and doing a good job of keeping you on track. Nor does the game suffer from any slowdown, even when Po is showing his kung fu skills to a half dozen or more enemies. The game makes use of a lot of key scenes from the film while expanding on a few and adding new material. Much of this new stuff deals with the more nefarious elements of society ramping up their misdeeds in preparation of Tai Lung's return, so Po will be fighting with ninja wolves, armies of crocodiles and legions of boar warriors, which keeps the game from getting stale.

Probably the biggest surprise is that Jack Black doesn't lend his voice to the videogame to bring Po to life – surprising, because whoever does is possibly the greatest Jack Black impersonator on the planet (a growth industry, to be sure!). It wasn't until the closing credits that this was made clear, such is the calibre of their stand-in. It's great that the guys at Luxoflux have done the best they can to make the transition from the big screen to the smaller one as smooth as possible, and all the other voice talent does a decent job of replicating their celebrity equivalents. Naturally the game is filled with appropriate kung fu combat sound effects along with much smashing and crashing, and the music gets the job done too.

To help you the player get your job done, Po can earn coins to spend on upgrades, which are divided into general skills and combat techniques. General skills include increasing your health or chi – the ability that lets you pull off special moves – or upgrading your base attack strength and basic moves. Combat techniques allow for the enhancement of all your special attacks as well as how much damage you can deal with weapons, all of which adds a little depth to what could have otherwise been a fairly shallow experience. Admittedly you'll easily earn enough coins to upgrade almost every single thing, but it does allow you to tailor the early game to your preferred style of play.

Of course, it ultimately doesn't make much difference: Kung Fu Panda is an incredibly easy game, one designed with a much younger audience in mind than say, oh, Ninja Gaiden 2 for example. Completing the main game will probably take experienced players no more than 5 or 6 hours, while most youngsters could probably master their kung fu in around 10 hours. During the course of the game you'll get the chance to play as other characters, most notably master Shifu, which provides a bit of variety, and collecting rare coins will unlock new levels and modes for the multiplayer component of the game. Much like the Open Season game, Kung Fu Panda has a half dozen mini-games playable with a friend locally, which will probably be something younger players get a kung fu kick out of.

Parental Perspective: If you've taken your kids to see the film, then your fate is probably already sealed: you'll be getting this game! But even if you haven't yet, Kung Fu Panda is one of the better kid's titles on the Xbox 360 at the moment. It looks just like its big-screen counterpart; the gameplay is easy enough to not be frustrating yet engaging enough to be fun, and the levels are pretty short and the scenery is always changing. Despite its G rating, the game is fairly combat-centric so it's worth bearing in mind that there's a lot of kung fu kicking and punching going on. It's on par with the content of the film though, so if you can pick this one up at a decent price, it should keep the kids entertained for awhile these holidays.