After playing (and completing) Kakuto Chojin’s single-player story mode in about 10 minutes or so you will you find yourself incredulously asking no one in particular, “This is all there is?” If the game’s developers were physically present you might have more than a few choice words in addition to that once the reality set in that you just blew 50 bucks. Kakuto Chojin (KC) is so short-lived and shallow in its gameplay options that you’ll swear that a demo disc somehow mistakenly found its way into the Xbox storage case you just unwrapped.

As fighting games go, KC has one of the most laughably awful single-player story modes ever to appear in a fighting game. I’m not kidding, you can get through one character’s story mode in about 10 minutes. The only “story” here is a few paragraphs of text that scroll down the screen once you quickly dispatch the required opponents to complete the story-less mode. The cut-scenes that supposedly tie any semblance of a story together are horrible too, not making any sense whatsoever. KC’s story mode and done-as-an-afterthought background of each character are so ridiculously bad that it really seems that it was solely created for E3 2002 to only showcase some of Xbox’s graphic horsepower and nothing more.

Kakuto Chojin's unbelievably fleeting gameplay makes this title nothing more than an overblown demo that gives the gamer a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of the Xbox’s graphical power. While it has some decent graphics and reasonably responsive controls, only those bored with DOA3 might consider renting KC on some rainy weekend. I can’t recommend anything more than that for this completely disappointing game.

You may even have trouble finding this game as it has been pulled from almost all retail shelves. It seems Microsoft got complaints due to some verbal content from one of the fighters. One fighter chants in another language "Praise Be Allah". After 911, I guess even video games are subject to scrutiny.