Lazy Bear Games brings out a great hit, Punch Club 2: Fast Forward for the sequel to the Punch Club.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is the long-awaited sequel to Punch Club, which was released in January 2016. Lazy Bear Games developed Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, and they are known for games like Punch Club and Graveyard Keeper. The publishers, tinyBuild, are known for publishing games such as Kill It With Fire and Not For Broadcast.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is a fighter management simulator where you have to help your character fight his way to the top, all while searching for clues on what happened to his Father. Management Simulators have been around since the early sixties; Punch Club 2: Fast Forward isn’t your typical management simulator as it pulls in aspects of a life simulator as well as time management aspects from a business simulator.
When you start Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, you can choose between two difficulties. There isn’t much difference between the two except that with the easy difficulty, you will have an easier time raising stats and fighting opponents compared to the normal difficulty, which is the original difficulty of the game.
The game starts with a cutscene where your character is dreaming about trying to stop a cat from falling off a building, but being unable to pull it up. He wakes up and finds his family whole, with his father being there with his mom and him. This quickly turns into a nightmare as reality warps and twists. When you wake up again, you will start with the tutorial.
You start increasing stats by working out and doing push-ups before an important part of your management kicks in. Your character is hungry, but unfortunately, the vending machine dispensing food isn’t working. You will use the map to travel to a friend’s house. Although all travel takes time, you can also speed it up if you have cash on you, though that isn’t the greatest thing to do at the beginning of the game, as you won’t have that much cash when you first start, and it’s needed to buy food and cover other expenses while working.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward has a linear story tree you can follow by collecting quests, so it doesn’t matter what order you do them in. Some quests reward buffs as they can lead to your character learning a new fighting style to take out opponents with, but gaining new fighting styles and leveling them up isn’t the only way to get permanent buffs. Your friend Henry, after completing your first quest with him, will ask if you would like to watch an old movie.
These movies each have their own skills attached to them. However, they are mostly passive buffs, such as increasing how easy it is to get skill points or extra inventory space. You can unlock them by using the points you get from watching the movies, though you will have to buy more movies after you have finished watching the first, and their price increases the more you buy.
Three jobs besides fighting will help you earn money in the early game. The first is the Noodle stand on Club Street. The second is working with the Russian Mafia in the Robot Factory Junkyard. And last but not least is helping out Mr Bobo’s farm.
One of the biggest mechanics in Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is the Good Person Points, or GPP for short. These points are needed for learning new moves when fighting, as long as your stats are high enough for them. If you get 2000 GPP, you can join the Police Force and eventually enter Upper City, where it is said you can find your character’s Father.
You collect GPP when you win a fight, but you can also lose them if you lose the fight. You can also earn GPP from learning laws in the Police Station, although you won’t earn a lot of points from doing so. It is, however, needed for your character to know the laws as well as earn 2000 GPP for them to be able to become a police officer.
Unfortunately, most fights you go through aren’t as simple as dodging your opponent’s attacks and landing enough hits on them to knock them out by getting their health to zero. While having a lot of skills is great, you still have to keep in mind the energy cost for each move, as you only have a certain amount of energy to use. This bar is raised when you level up the relevant trait.
If you don’t have enough energy when you fight, the match can quickly become one-sided. When you have zero energy during your match, your character will go down, and you will lose a chunk of your health. This doesn’t mean it’s an instant loss. If you can get your opponent’s health even one point below yours, it is your victory, but you will have to carefully manage your energy levels during all 5 rounds of the match. Once you have lost a match, a chunk of your health is lost, and you will have to regen it; otherwise, you will have another disadvantage for your next match.
You can regain energy by resting at home or buying energy drinks. The same can be said for health. Resting at home, eating food, and visiting Dr. Feelgood at Silver’s Gym. You will also have to watch your hunger bar. If you are too hungry, you won’t be able to train or get any work done, so it is a constant grind to get money to make food or buy it.
You also have a happiness meter. It can go down pretty quickly if you don’t keep an eye on it. If it’s too low, it can give you debuffs that affect your stats. You can raise it by watching movies with Henry or by winning fights.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward has many different Cyberpunk aspects to it, such as the Neurogym and people having their memories saved in an archive in Upper City. One of the most helpful aspects of this is the software you can install on your chip. Some software you unlock after getting enough reputation with the NPC.
Some of the software you can get requires you to pay a fee to use it, so it gets added as a new daily cost for you to keep an eye on. For Example, the Neurotrainer Pass that gives you a 50% discount on any Neuro training in Silver’s Gym requires you to pay $8 daily for upkeep. While it makes it easier to gain trait points from Neurotraining, it also makes it harder to gain experience from physical workouts.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward has an amazing retro feel to the game’s graphics and the characters’ appearance. Lazy Bear Games outdid themselves with the game’s pixel graphics, as it is incredibly detailed and makes the game incredibly unique to.
The sound engineering was done well. The background music makes it feel like an old-school cyberpunk game from the 80s. The sound effects work well and keep to this retro theme. It builds as you continue playing, creating incredibly immersive and addictive gameplay, even with it being a little repetitive. Overall, Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is a great fighter management simulator, especially for those who don’t mind the grind and love challenges.
