Punch Club (PC) Review

Punch Club is a game from the Lithuanian developers Lazy Bear Games. They combine sports management and life simulation into a pop culture-laden packet.

In Punch Club the player takes the role of an aspiring fighter whose father was killed when he was a child. He sets out to be the best fighter in the world and find out who killed his father but can get sidetracked by other missions, like becoming a masked vigilante and trying to find a hearing aid.

Punch Club was a game that was trying to do many things at once. It was a point-and-click adventure, a sports management game, life simulation, and nostalgia baiting. It was trying to have the freedom of a simulation like Football Manager and The Sims whilst railroading players down a story route: these were two contrasting styles of gameplay.

The story of Punch Club was a standard affair for a story for a film from the 1980s. The character is out on a mission of vengeance, must work his way up the fighting ranks, and discovers that his father had a magical medallion. The game was overt with its references and influences like Bloodsport, Rocky, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat. It was a game designed by children of the ‘80s and ‘90s for children of the ‘80s and ‘90s. It was cute to be involved in a subplot involving four mutant ninja brothers and their rodent father, and it was fun to notice all the references, from Indiana Jones to The Simpsons to Fight Club. However, there’s a limit on how reliable cultural references are because there’s a point when it becomes grating, showing the game developers didn’t have any original ideas. During my playthrough, a part of the story turned into a video game remake of Rocky IV.

Graphically and musically Punch Club was emulating the 16-bit era and it was a part of the indie game retro boom. It was a nice throwback and tickles the nostalgia bones because of the pixel art. While I played Punch Club on a PC the point-and-click interface would work on a tablet.

Punch Club was a stat management game. The character needed to improve his fighting stats to stand a better chance at winning, whilst also needing to make sure that the health, food, and energy bars were maintained. If the character doesn’t go to the gym, then their fighting stats decrease and the player would have to work to regain them. This made Punch Club a grinding game since the character will be working out just to inch their stats a little higher. It was almost hypnotic watching the bar going up. I was playing a game where I was watching a man work out and I was thinking, I should be going to the gym.

However, the gameplay loop can get boring. By the end of the game when my character was wealthy enough all I did was spend all my time at the gym working out, eating protein bars, and consuming energy drinks. It was repetitive. At least in the early stages of the game, the player had to find a balance between exercising, eating, sleeping, and working, even if it did feel like The Sims without the creativity. During the early game there was more of an incentive to do the side quests like fighting the Sewer Crocs or becoming Dark Fist since they gave the player a chance to build up experience points that could be used on the skill tree.

As a fighting game, Punch Club took the bold step to make the fights unplayable. All the player can do is select the moves they could for the next round. Oddly this appealed to the Football Manager player in me. There was a need to select the right moves when facing opponents. Some moves can drain the character’s stamina, so the player needs to deploy them at the right time, and some moves could counteract the opponents’ advantages. It was a simple system, but it required some trial and error. There was satisfaction when I did defeat a tough opponent who beat me a few times. Due to the fights feeling like matches in Football Manager, it made me want to shout some inappropriate things. When playing Punch Club I focused on gaining a high strength stat with stamina as a secondary stat. My logic was I got the best of both worlds: power and durability.

As a throwback to ‘80s and ‘90s culture Punch Club did provide some entertainment value, but as a gameplay experience it became too repetitive. It tries to offer replay value with the side missions, but one playthrough is all that is required.