Free from the constraints of No Game New Year, on New Years
Day I downloaded One Finger Death Punch from Xbox Live. You may remember early
last year, this was one of the games that tempted me away from NGNY. I didn’t
go for it at the time, but I was reminded of it when I had a look at
TotalBiscuit’s Top 10 games for 2014. He mentions this game in his top 10, and
I remembered his WTF is video and wanting to try the game out for myself. Well,
why not?
Most people reading this probably know the score, but if
not, here’s how the game works: Enemies come running at you. When they get
close enough, you press the X button to attack to the left and the A button to
attack to the right. There’s absolutely nothing else to it. No movement, no special
moves, nothing that involves anything other than pressing X to attack to the
left, and A to attack to the right.
Simple? Yes, definitely. But it is so much fun.
 |
| Two buttons. This game is brilliant. |
There’s a lot to be said for a game that only does one thing
but does it very well. Mechanically, it’s
fantastic. As the attack animations
happen instantly, timing is essential but there’s no faffing about waiting for
a move to wind up. However, if you miss, you’re left vulnerable to attack for
about a quarter of a second, which for a game of this speed is a very long
time. The player character and enemies are stick men; an odd decision, but it
fits the light-hearted nature of the game and keeps the attention where it
needs to be: On the action.
Variety is provided by the different ways in which the
levels and enemies are organised. Most levels are ‘Mob Levels,’ which simply
require you to kill all the enemies. But there are some that require you to do
it in a certain amount of time, smash a certain number of items, or do the
level in black and white so that you can’t distinguish different enemies and
there are even some levels that give you a Light Sword or Knunchaku. Some
enemies require more than one hit – from potentially more than one direction –
to take down, and others, called ‘Brawlers,’ cuts away from the main stage and
requires you to press X and A multiple times in a sequence to beat them. Your
character can pick up weapons, which increases your reach or gives you a ranged
attack. Outside the levels there is a ‘map’ screen where you can choose what
levels you play and activate the skills you acquire in certain levels. These
‘power-ups’ usually involve either being able to use weapons multiple times, or
slowing the enemies down in some way. All this content from a game that uses
two buttons.
But doesn’t it get old? Well, the whole game takes around
4-5 hours to complete, and you’re probably not going to get through it all in
one sitting unless you’re determined to do so. But that’s not the point of this
game. It would work very well on a Mobile
device because it’s absolutely fine just to pick it up and play. There’s no
exposition, no plot, no reason for you to be doing anything other than the fact
that you are. The levels are generally over in about a minute, so you can do as
much as you like depending on how much time you have. Finally, your score for
the level depends on how many times you missed – the fewer, the better – and
whether or not you took any damage yourself. You can always replay the levels
and aim for a better score, if you’re interested in tackling the game this way.
As for me, I’ve got to the end of the game on the easiest
difficulty. While I’ll probably come back to it at some point if I need
something to fill half an hour, I will mark this game off as beaten. But if you’ve
got £2 to spare, I recommend you check this game out. We could all do with some
more games that don’t take themselves too seriously!
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