Punch Club is a gaming nerds version of hitting the gym

IN GAMING, most New Year resolutions are 1920 x 1080. (Nerd alert!) Still, that doesn’t mean gamers can’t hit the gym too. Or at least swipe and tap the gym, writes Ronan Jennings

Wed, 13 Jan, 2016 - 00:00

Ronan Jennings

Punch Club is a Rocky simulator. There’s no better way to describe this addictive experience which landed on Steam last week and will arrive on Android and the App Store soon.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be furiously tapping and swiping to throw punches, sweating like Conor McGregor standing near a swear box.

Instead, this is a game about numbers — you need to manage your fighter’s lifestyle and training regime in order to reach the top.

To begin with, you’ll have just two skills (punch and block) and the bare minimum in your three stats: power, speed and endurance.

However, shortly into the game you find a trainer and a gym, which opens up new choices. Will you train a mixture of stats or focus primarily on power, speed or endurance?

Then you must start to specialise in skills based on those stats. A fighter with high agility, for example, can acquire dodge, block and even kicks while a fighter with power can focus on thudding hooks and uppercuts.

Fights themselves play out in a nice visual style, but the results are totally dependent on the underlying stats. Each fighter has a health bar that slowly goes down depending on the hits taken, while an energy bar dictates the moves you can use and your stamina. If either of these runs out, you’re in trouble.

The thing is, just like real life, there are only so many hours in the day. You can only train a certain amount before sleep and food become a factor, with the latter costing money, as does the training itself.

So you must work a job too, in order to keep your income stable. The problem is a job takes time and working also makes you hungry and tired! Getting the balance right for fight night, which usually comes around every few days, is the key to progress.

Punch Club could have been dry material in the hands of another developer, but Tiny Build have done a great job making the world charming and funny.

There are plenty of pop culture references (the first gym has a Ninja Turtle costume on the wall) and there’s a fun, engaging story driving the whole experience forward.

Your father was killed when you were just a child — the last thing he said to you was: “Train hard and be ready.” This colourful, engaging world elevates Punch Club from the amateur ranks to professional.

Give it a shot — if nothing else, all that tapping will really improve your jab.

REALITY BITES

Sony didn’t show its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset at CES 2016, probably due to competition

There are likely many reasons why Sony didn’t show their Project Morpheus virtual reality (VR) headset at CES 2016.

The biggest reason, however, was surely the stiff competition on show. Oculus and HTC Vive were also at the event, with both of these more impressive from a hardware perspective especially when running on high-end PCs and not a relatively underpowered PS4.

However, the success of VR will be determined by the underlying experiences, not the power of the hardware, and Sony claims to be working hard with developers on that front.

“We have more than 200 developers signed up for the PlayStation VR programme who are working on probably a hundred or more titles that will play on PlayStation VR,” said Sony chief executive Kaz Hirai, while dumping 3D TVs into a nearby bin.

“That is a testament to the kind of support that we’re getting from the content creation community.”

The PlayStation VR headset is due to launch in the first half of this year — we can’t wait to see what developers will think up for it.