Punch Your Way to the Top | Punch Club 2

Video games allow for an array of storylines to be told, a work of science fiction can take form as the player makes choices that affect how the story unfolds. Punch Club 2 Fast Forward is the perfect example of a unique and odd storyline playing out with the help of the player. The technology influenced future is your new home as you venture outside your mom’s house for the first time in your 20 years of life.

You will train up your strength, agility, and stamina in order to fight your way through any and all altercations in your attempt to find out what happened to your missing father. You will start out with the dusty rug in your garage to begin leveling up your stats, but jobs are where the real experience is at. At least in the early game.

With the mystery of your dad leaving before your birth, you have zero information to go off of, but that won’t stop you from trying to hunt him down. The only thing you know about him was that he was the best fighter in the city, then disappeared after he won the big tournament. So, what better way to solve this mystery than to fight your way to the top of the food chain? Punch and dodge until you surpass every fighter in the whole city and then maybe, just maybe, you can see your father for the first time.

Of course, you will need funds in order to live. Food cost money, and the best way to get money for a random 20 year old who has no resume is to work for the illegal gangs in order to buy a slime sandwich. The beginning will have a lot of focus on making sure you can afford to feed yourself while also training at the local gym. In this Wall-E adjacent world, people have began to ditch the blood, sweat, and tears of hard work and have turned to machines to boost their stats. You can choose the old school or the new school methods, but take advantage of what resources you can.

Luckily, you don’t have to grind with the mafia and yakuza forever. Eventually you will need to make your career. Follow in your dad’s footsteps and become a trainer in the very gym you help to restore, built on the old school methods of hard work gets results, or gain benefits by becoming a police officer. Make sure to watch your time, both of these jobs will have you working set shifts and you have to earn that minimum wage or else you will be begging on the streets. And don’t forget, your main goal is to get information on where to find your dad, so keep up with those fighting leagues!

A massive mission to unravel the untold tale of a disappearance will mean that you become intertwined with a lot of other people and their problems. Never fear a mundane time of nonstop work and fights, side missions are abundant here. Help out your mother and her sleepless nights, save the local supermarket from constantly getting robed, and even the man in charge of the biggest league in the city could use a hand.

The crazy, ever evolving story line is the star of the game. Everything connects and the story will twist and turn in ways you next would have guessed. This is a game you really have to play yourself to truly understand why it’s so good. I recommend this game for anyone who enjoys crazy stories, management games, or games that focus on punching others in the face.