Publisher: Adult Swim Games

Developer: Team2Bit

Release Date: 7/31/2013

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8-bit brawlers don’t really have a large following, but when one comes up I tend to pay attention. Fist Puncher is an adult-infused brawler with blood, guts, and censored nudity. The story’s nothing special and pretty forgettable with some lame dialog, but what were you expecting? You can pick one of four characters that have different special abilities. Using the A and X buttons perform light and heavy attacks while B grabs. Holding down RT allows you to use your special meter and perform a special attack. The one thing Fist Puncher does differently from most brawlers is the RPG aspects.

You can level up with the XP you earned to learn new moves, increase strength, health, etc. Once you start leveling up the game becomes a bit easier, but early in the game is really tough, especially during boss fights, and if you are playing by yourself. This isn’t really a single-player game but can be done if you are careful. While you’re fighting goons you can pick up objects and toss them, and collect letters that spell “rage” which gives you a power boost. The only problem here is that the same letters drop too often and most of the time you won’t ever spell “rage”. Thankfully the game has a depth that allows you to avoid attacks, but honestly, the combat system is pretty shallow. At least the hits pack a punch, but some enemies take forever to take down.

To advance you need to complete the many levels on the overworld map. There are a ton of levels and this leads to repetition which is one of the game’s biggest flaws. I’d rather have a few levels so I didn’t get bored with the game. At least the environments are varied, and sometimes the humor can pull out a laugh or two, but the game really needed more to be memorable. Adult Swim Games have been putting out a lot of quality quirky games, but they are always lacking something to make them great. Fist Puncher’s 8-bit graphics are also not that great. They are low quality and very ugly along with boring character designs. Nothing in the game looks fairly interesting or even good and that is another problem with this game.

As it is, Fist Puncher is a fun weekend play-through with friends on the couch, but nothing more. Some people may not get very far and get bored fairly quickly, some may love it a lot and play through to the end. Despite all the flaws, the game has solid controls, a fun RPG system, and some quirky humor.