Despite its "E10+" rating from the ESRB for "Comic Violence, Comic Mischief," All Star Karate does serve as a decent tutorial in deliberate, focused exercise moves for young 'uns in the guise of Karate. Except it's not Karate; it's a motion-sensed regimen of well-timed swipes and jabs that result in (hopefully) well-timed punches or kicks by a character on screen - and that latter bit, kicking with a fistful of Wii Remote (Wii-mote), is not kicking at all. So much for the Karate simulation.
Nevertheless, the single player portion of All Star Karate does provide a solid, get-off-the-couch interactive activity as the player is encouraged to learn basic through advanced quasi-Karate moves by following on-screen prompts intimating straight arm jabs, roundhouse swipes and upwardly thrusts within a couple of seconds of sweet spot, which are then strung together as a combo or "Kata." You can also create your own Katas, complete with sequential timing, which is cumbersome but effective in the end.
You learn the moves by wrote and repetition, not unlike the disciplined practice of any such martial art in real life (except again, nobody kicks with their fist in real life).
Most of this is done shadow-boxing style - or "air Karate" as it were - on a practice mat or stage under the tutelage of an aging hippy/Jeff Bridges wannabe Sensei.
This is all well and good and actually veers remarkably close to "great" save for some control issues that can't be ignored. Basically, a swipe of the Wii-mote or the tethered Nunchuk attachment (or two Wii-motes, if desired, with or without Wii MotionPlus accessories) will not always register as such. Worse, bringing the thing back to a ready stance sometimes will register as the motion initially missed, one totally backward from the prompted move you're trying to mimic, therefore botched.
This isn't so bad in the single player mode where there's no real "losing" but infinite opportunity to try-try-again until perfected, but in the two-player portion of the game, where you and a buddy, sibling or parent get to have at it, 2-D Street Fighter style, the thing's a mess. It's impossible to not have any given round degenerate into a two player exercise in spastic waggle. At that point, it's just another crummy little "budget" game in a sea of crummy little budget game's for Wii.
Funny, but crummy-game apologist might be inclined to suggest All Star Karate is a "good game for kids." This would be true if the "kids" were morons, ate dirt, preferred Velcro to shoelaces and wore hockey helmets to bed, in which case a paper bag and dish rag would also be a "good game for kids."
Were it not for the simple, forgiving and somewhat-sensible single-player segment, it'd have little appeal to even the single-digit age group (despite its overly-cautious "10+" rating). Thus, as it stands, only half of All Star Karate is worth checking out - and even then only because it costs just $20 at GameStop (but $30 at THQ.com, which is ridiculous).
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