‘Fist of Awesome’ Review – Tough To Bear

Punching a bunch of bears in the face sounds pretty cool, right? How does punching hundreds of the same looking bear a countless number of times sound then? Sounds to me like it would get boring after beating the tenth bear into mush. Fist of Awesome from I Fight Bears has a few problems, repetition being the most prominent.

The game works like most beat-em-ups should. The player always progresses to the right side of the screen while fighting hordes of enemies, but something felt off about the game from even the first ten minutes: there are buttons to kick, jump, grab, and even special attack, but the normal punch button is all I found necessary to use.

Plain and simple, the biggest issue I had with the game was that, while there were multiple ways to go about attacking the enemy bears, there were never any options more viable than simply punching them repeatedly. The special attack might have been good if it wasn’t mandatory to stop moving while charging it. With the large hordes of enemies that will grab and beat you as soon as you stand still, using the special attack never made much sense.

Despite Fist of Awesome’s poor combat design, the presentation was done quite well. I Fight Bears seems to have focused on having a variety of bear costumes and interesting settings over compelling gameplay. Each scene happened in a different point in bearkind’s history with an interesting backdrop and costume set for each. For example, the prehistoric time scenes were filled with enemy bears wearing costumes, inspired by Fred Flinstone, in a lush looking jungle with a volcano in the distance. The retro-like visuals looked really great on my Android phone, acting as the primary motivation for me to continue through the game.

There is not a lot to say about FoA’s sound design, unfortunately. The soundtrack did its job, but was never quite memorable. Every attack the player makes would play the sound of some guy making some sort of noise like a child would make when pretending to fight. It was a really odd design decision that I ultimately could have gone without.

I suppose my real frustration of Fist of Awesome comes from the inconsistent levels of its awesome. The art and writing was really good, which made the combat seem even worse than it was. I felt that there was so much potential from I Fight Bears to make a truly great beat ‘em up, but more time was spent on being silly than being enjoyable. Even with a successful Kickstarter, the fact the developer wasn’t able to create any challenge in such a promising game really disappointed me. If the gameplay had been more difficult than “punch-punch-punch, move to not be surrounded, punch-punch-punch-punch, done” for every enemy, I would have really enjoyed Fist of Awesome.