Punch Club is not what I expected. At first glance, it looks like a brawler, but it is not. Punch Club if I could describe it for me, is a fighter simulator that places heavy emphasis on time and resources management. After a brief intro about our hero’s tragic past, you receive a call from someone telling you to get a job. You get on the bus and on the way to a construction site to work, you get into the first of many many fights (which this one you’ll obviously lose), and Mick, a retired fighter sees your potential. This sets the events in motion for your story.
In Punch Club, it’s imperative that you manage your time and resources in the best way possible. Each day, you can choose to either train your body, work to get some cash, or do a little bit of everything. However, there are some rules since there are four gauges that govern every aspect of the game: health, fullness, morale, and energy gauges. The health gauge determines the amount of HP you start with on fights. The higher the amount on the gauge, the more HP you have. The fullness gauge determines the amount of time you can be either training or working. The energy and morale gauges also have an important role here when you are working. For example, the three gauges slowly deplete once the energy or fullness gauge are almost empty, so you can no longer work and need to eat and rest.
Now, in order to be able to rest to regain morale, health, and energy, the fullness gauge must be full because as you rest and regain those three gauges, the fullness gets depleted, meaning that you cannot sleep on an empty stomach. Pro Tip: If you are broke, tired, and on an empty stomach, you can go to the bar and search the garbage can (I know gross but one must live) once a day you can find a rotten burger. This “food” lowers your health and morale gauges when eaten but gives you 40 points in fullness, so you can rest a little to regain energy and some morale. If by any chance this happens at the beginning of a day, you can walk around the city wasting time and repeat the search. Once you have enough energy and fullness to work, you can head to the construction site (or the pizza parlor once unlocked) to earn some money and buy edible food.
History wise, there are a lot of things you can do in Punch Club, and you can choose how to approach each aspect of this history. You can choose to train enough to become the state champ or become a hero of justice, The Dark Fist (so hilarious), become the king of the underground fights, meet the Ninja Gators (LOL–once you see them, you’ll know where they take from), or fight the toughest fight of them all, the battle for love.
As I mentioned previously, you can choose how to approach each story line, so there is a lot of control that the player has on how the events unfold. However, speaking of control since Punch Club is a sim, the only button you will be pushing is A, and the left stick to move around the map and your character in places. Once you get close to a item, you can interact with it, and it will get highlighted in a yellow aura. Simply press A and sit back and see how the gauges deplete. There are also three aspects that you can work on: strength, speed, and stamina. Strength determines the damage you inflict on opponents and is the red gauge. Speed determines how quick can you act and many quick skills like kicks depend on this aspect. Stamina determines the amount of damage you can defend to and how fast you can recover energy on fights.t is important to raise one aspect in specific at a time (even Mick recommends that as well), since in the everyday cycle you earn points if you train. However, when each day ends, you also lose points. For example, you can get the whole day training and raise your strength to level three, but starting the next day, it will be on two and a half. It is a battle to get your stats as high as possible, specially before fights.
While there is a lot to do in Punch Club, the most important thing is to fight. And winning those fights should be your main goal, since after winning or losing a fight, you get skill points (you get more if you win) that you can use to unlock new techniques and fight styles and even unlock skill slots so you can have a more varied repertoire. Personally, what I did in my playthrough, is work as much as possible at keeping my strength, speed, and stamina on level three (important if you move around the city with a lot of cash) and bought all gym equipment on the sports store. That way the money that I worked for was only used on food, and I was able to get my stats as high as possible before having the need to work again for food.
Graphically, the 16 bit aesthetic looks really good and crisp, and you also have a retro filter that looks even better. The music is really good and the chip tunes, although repetitive do not overstay their welcome.
Bottom Line: Punch Club is a interesting concept that has enough appeal to have you playing for long periods of time, even if player input is limited. The nods to 80’s and 90’s shows and characters are bound to make you chuckle more than once. I can definitely recommend it if you want a game that you can play for hours and keep you entertained.