If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you’ll know that I’m not big on simplistic. Most games I come across that are simplistic usually employ gimmicks, which don’t remain entertaining very long. The proliferation of the mobile games industry hasn’t helped with that view as you see many developers trying to cash in when certain gimmicks become hot (*cough* Flappy Bird *cough*). I thought One Finger Death Punch was going to be one of those games. HOLY SHIT was I wrong.
The concept and control of One Finger Death Punch is very simple. The came consists of only two buttons that allow you to attack to your left or right side. When enemies enter your attack range, you need to kill them before they hit you. If you attack too soon (which they are out of range) then you’ll leave yourself open for attack. The game starts simple enough – make sure the enemies don’t get to you. Even at this simple stage of the game, I was wowed by it. The music sounds like you’re in a martial arts epic, and you can hear the sounds of faces getting punched and bones breaking. As you hit your enemies, they will fly through the air breaking other objects and causing all types of chaos in your environment.
After playing One Finger Death Punch you may never look at the men’s bathroom figure the same way again. How could you after you see him punch a heart out of someone’s chest in slow motion or break someone’s neck with a punch? The sounds and visuals add a layer of excitement to the gameplay, and that’s even before the game starts throwing curveballs at you.
After the first few stages you will be introduced to different types of enemies. Some enemies require more than one hit to kill. These enemies will be a different color, but they will also have an indicator underneath them telling you which buttons you need to press. At first this isn’t important, but later on it becomes very important. You start with green enemies that need to be hit twice, but then blue enemies come into the mix that once you hit them, they move to the opposite side; prepared to counter attack unless you can get another hit in quickly. Enemies with more complex patterns will continue to appear during the game, which is why I said reading that indicator becomes very important later on.
Having one or two of these enemies on the screen at once isn’t that big of a deal, but when you have five or six of them coming at you at one time, then it can get a little hard to track of who you hit and what button you should press next. There are also enemies which, once you engage them, begin a chain of commands you need to hit to kill them. While this is going on, other enemies are pushed back while you spar with this one enemy. Some enemies also carry weapons which you can take and greatly extend your reach when fighting. Some of these weapons are completely ranged like the bow and daggers. My favorite weapon had to be this ball. When you hit it, it would hit an enemy and bounce back too you; making it so you can keep using it over and over.
Besides the different types of enemies, you will also need to adapt to the different types of rounds. Most of the game consists of Mob Rounds where you need to defeat a certain amount of enemies. Not too far into the game you will be introduced to other rounds, like Speed Round, where you need to defeat all enemies in a certain time frame, Smash Round, where you need to hit enemies into objects to break a specified number of them, and Dagger rounds where you can only kill enemies by throwing daggers. There are more types of rounds I saw and didn’t get to play due to my obsession of getting at least a gold medal on each map.
There are two types of rounds that look really cool to play: the Nunchuku Rounds and Light Sword Rounds. In both of these rounds there are no colors on enemies, only silhouettes. Your weapon glows in the dark and you use them to quickly dispatch enemies. All enemies die in one hit, so in these rounds the enemies will typically come at you faster. The overall visual aesthetic of these rounds along with the music that place got me pumped every time. If I hit the button to start a level and saw “NUNCHUKU ROUND!” flash across the screen I got excited!
The speed of the game is a key component that is also controlled by how well you do. There is a speed modifier in the top left hand side of the screen, and every time you complete a level it goes up. On the flipside, every time you fail a level it goes down. In my opinion, the faster the game goes the more fun it was. I wish the game suggested that the speed modifier went down instead of pulling it down automatically for you, because I would never want the game to go slower no matter how bad I was doing.
I played One Finger Death Punch for quite some time but never finished. Even with everything I did in the game I saw that there was still more to unlock. There are three mastery levels to complete, and I was only on the first. For the price, this game definitely gives you a lot to play. If you’re up for testing your stamina there is a survival mode where you just need to play until you run out of health. I thoroughly enjoyed One Finger Death Punch and am looking forward to chiseling away at it for some time. For $4.99 the game definitely gives you more than what you paid for. I highly suggest checking it out.
