Drunken Fist [Xbox]

Developed by Deklazon and EastAsiaSoft, Drunken Fist is a beat ‘em up with a unique twist - you’re completely wasted. As you stagger your way through the seven levels: a continuous stretch, with each level blending seamlessly into the next; you’ll haphazardly punch, kick and sweep your way through a variety of foes. Each level gives you a list of objectives; targets for you to hunt down and beat, with some also having collectibles to find such as donuts.

Controls are… interesting. Obviously, being called Drunken Fist you’re gonna be drunk, so you’re very unsteady on your feet and will take a tumble more than a few times. You’ll be able to eat hamburgers off the ground to replenish your health, pick up discarded beer bottles to top up your drunken-ness, and take a piss in public to empty your bladder. Fighting enemies is very clumsy feeling, which can feel oddly complicated, either a purposeful choice from the devs on behalf of your character being drunk, or maybe you’re drunk to cover the clumsiness up.

In the levels you’ll take on jocks and punks, as well as avoid the cops - after all, being drunk and disorderly is an offence! Enemies have different behaviours, with punks taking to throwing rocks at you, hipsters trying to cave in your skull with their guitars and gangsters trying to put a bullet in you. Cops can be defeated, but it’s best to just avoid them where possible, as a single hit from one will spell failure for you.

The visuals are very blocky, with the return of one of the most familiar asset packs we’ve seen (used in Freddy Spaghetti, Doug Hates His Job, Holes.io to name a few), and all enemies of a specific type have the same look - from Bikers to Gangsters and everything in between (six types in total), the extent of variation you get is that some of the characters will have different colour schemes. The soundtrack is quite plain, with a few different looping tracks used throughout - some of these seem to go with the gameplay somewhat, but one in particular felt completely mismatched, sounding more like a track from Rugrats: Search for Reptar than a drunken brawler.

On occasion it would hit us with some issues, such as enemy weapons continuing to deal damage purely by virtue of you touching them on the floor after the enemy has been dealt with, attacks not happening at all after pushing the buttons (though the stamina meter still gets affected), and even in one case an enemy spawning completely out of the playable area, soft-locking the level and forcing a restart - pretty annoying when you realise its the final enemy required in the final level, and you’ll need to restart the level and re-defeat all 45 enemies.

Overall, Drunken Fist is a very comedic brawler, and whilst it can feel quite slow and clunky at times, it does still end up being mildly fun, though nothing groundbreaking - and it ends up falling flat at the end, with no actual ending to make it worth trudging through, though with no story to be seen anywhere else, I don’t know what I expected! Available on Xbox for £6.69, it’s quite a cheap title, but does still feel a little on the high side for what it is - so I’d recommend picking it up on sale if you’re still looking to try it out.

In the end, we decided to give Drunken Fist the Collecting Asylum rating of 4/10.

Are you interested in Drunken Fist? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x