Recent reviews by Noni

One Finger Death Punch is a game that harkens back to the days of 2D animated stick figure fights like the Xiao Xiao series. It's an incredibly fun experience that puts you in control of the main character of one of those flash animations - the number of enemies means nothing, and you tear through them as a nigh-untouchable god of martial arts.

And yet playing as this rampaging deity requires precisely two buttons. There are no complex combinations to memorise, just "left" or "right"; based on the situation, you might deflect a spear, throw a bomb or slam someone into a table (breaking the table in the process, obviously). How well you do depends entirely on your timing and reactions.

The game has two main modes. Survival Mode has you face an infinite onslaught of enemies until you run out of health, and there are three flavours of this mode to unlock. Story Mode consists of a network of short stages that eventually lead to a "final stage", and has three difficulty levels that affect the game speed and the number of enemies in each stage.

Story Mode is the more varied of the two (despite its name, there isn't any actual story - feel free to imagine your own). There are a good variety of stages - examples are the Smash Round, which has a quota on objects destroyed rather that opponents killed, and the Multi Round, which is much shorter than the others, but has to be completed several times in a row at increasing speed.

Based on how you perform in Story Mode, the game will speed up or slow down to match your skill, though there is a minimum speed associated with each difficulty level. Clear a stage too easily, and the game will increase its pace on the next one to ensure a challenge. This sort of feedback allows for both the casual and hardcore player to enjoy the game. Failing a stage will make the next attempt a bit easier, and for some, pushing the game to higher and higher multipliers is enjoyment in itself.

Scattered across Story Mode are stages that, once beaten, unlock skills for the player to equip. Skills have a killcount that, once reached, will trigger the activation. The skills, too, are diverse - one causes weapons to drop, allowing you to pick them up and use them, another lets you throw the next weapon you pick up, and a third clears the entire screen of enemies. Crucially, you can equip several skills at once, allowing the player to mix and match skills they feel would work well together (for instance, the first two mentioned). There are some stages where skills are disabled, but most allow them. They are also available for use in Survival Mode (but must be unlocked via Story Mode first).

The only issue that I currently have with the game is that it will occasionally go into slow motion to show a particularly vicious punch, which can throw off your timing somewhat. While I do appreciate that it's done for spectacle (and rightly so), it has cost me a life on several occasions. An option to disable these would be nice.

Apart from that (small and pedantic) matter, I can wholeheartedly recommend picking up One Finger Death Punch. It's a great game for passing small amounts of time (I get a bit burnt out playing it for too long, your experience may differ), and adjusts well to your skill level. The graphics, simple as they are, do not detract from the gameplay, which is immensely fun, and makes you feel like the most powerful stick figure of them all.