Punch Club

This game has potential. It has pretty much easter eggs which points to other fighting movies, games, etc. But... It is buggy as hell. E.g. when you go excercising on the machine and looks into fight menu, the character stops excercising (WHY). When you go somewhere sometimes the character stops and it is hell to force him to move again, etc. Next thing is repetiteveness. When you start, there are new things, new objectives, but well. After few days, when the beginning is over (like 30 days or so), it goes like this: - Excercise (because over midnight you loose some of the stats), - Eat, - Sleep, - Fight, - Work, - Buy food, And here we go again and again and again... Sometimes you win and fullfill objective, which will move you forward, but it is nothing compared to the boring repetition of certain tasks... Strange thing is, that some people tell, in reviews, that in later game you can buy equipment. Yeah, you can. Had bought it till day 30, but still can't see any difference. Great disappointment :-(

The game sells itself as a sort of 'boxing RPG' or training sim, but all it is is watching meters fill and numbers go up while occasionally watching your character trade punches with a parody of a character from an action game or movie. If it were at least charming, it could get away with a lot, but the writing is stilted and mostly asinine. The game ends with a joke before the last battle you've been working towards, rendering the game utterly pointless even in its own context. The thing you're working towards never happens. It fails as a game, it fails as a parody, it even fails as a waste of time. It is barely a game. It is an interactive loading screen. Please do not buy Punch Club.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. But I didn't. First of all I'm grateful for the graphical design and the collection of pop culture references throughout the game. The multilanguage support was good too. I just don't find this game fun. It's grinding. Some of yours numbers are constantly falling down and you send your avatar to build them up. There is a variety of actions to build up your numbers some of which are unlocked throughout the game, The love and injury effects are a nice touch to play with your numbers some more. However at it's core it's just a waiting simulator. When the numbers fall down you have to bring them up and it takes a while of grinding to pin the numbers in position. Even if you do nothing and past the day the numbers fall down too. How can you improve this game? I respect there was efforts made to add variety but it would really benefit from making the core mechanics a bit more forgiving. Perhaps decreasing the rate of fall and increasing the rate of rising each important stat. I know there is a story I'm not advancing into but this is my second attempt and I am still going through the same grind. I'm uninstalling it.

Punch Club brings back memories for me. The art style, the music, the punch, punch, punching. If you played games in the late eighties to mid-nineties, games like Punch-Out!, and enjoyed beating the tar out of those freaks, then you will probably love this game. I sure do. Now to be fair this game isn't like Punch-Out! in that you don't actually control your fight mono-a-mono. Instead, before each round, you select from an assortment of RPG-like skills that are then randomly used. Things like thunderbolt punches, or karate kicks, blocks, or even taking a breather. Now in order to get the really gnarly moves you have to win a lot of fights, train a lot of times and earn skill points to unlock them. As the title of this review states this game is a grind. As time passes each day you loose some of your strength, stamina, and agility, and it takes a lot of effort to get it back. If you don't like any type of grinding, this game may not be for you, without this mechanic though one could probably win it in 3 or 4 hours. And if you are like me, this games atmosphere and fighting spirit are worth the grind; in fact it is like a Thanksgiving feast, worth savoring pound by glorious pound. Now get out the jump rope kid, pound down the pizza, and hit this like 1990.

Very old version of game, sell with same price tag as up to date version.