Drunken Fist | Review | Switch

 by Danny Bivens

The ultimate drunken escapade?

For me, Drunken Fist was a weird surprise to find sitting on the Nintendo eShop in late December 2020. Although the game came out on PC in the summer of 2019, it was more or less an unknown to me. Thanks to publisher EastAsiaSoft, the game is now available to players on the PS4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch. Is this drunk, physics based simulator worth the cash? That’s what I’m here to talk about. 

Drunken Fist is a physics based 3D beat ‘em up that puts you in control of what appears to be a drunk hobo. You’ll be fighting a variety of other drunkards including jocks, hipsters, punks and even have to avoid police. There are a total of seven stages to go through here that contain hidden bottles of booze and food that you’ll need to fuel your romp through town. 

Controls here are simple enough but do take some getting used to. Players have a handful of punches and kicks to take out foes. These are performed by presses of the face buttons and/or combinations of the face buttons and the should buttons. For the most part, everything works fine, however there seems to be some kind of unspoken cool down for some of the attacks. Once you figure out which attacks can quickly dispatch your foes (ex. a sweeping kick, a flurry kick), you’ll likely try to use these to move on.While some of the attacks, or the dodge move, can be done with every button press, other times buttons don’t do anything or there is some kind of lag with the inputs. It’s really strange, and I guess given the theme of the game (being a drunk), it makes sense. Still, it makes strategies a bit hard to formulate since you aren’t able to do everything that you like. 

In the breaks from the fighting, you will need to make sure to keep drinking (if you can find alcohol) and you will also occasionally need to relieve yourself. These can be performed by presses of the d-pad, which have will have the items showing up on screen indicating which button to press. The game truly doesn’t take itself too seriously and that is definitely part of its charm. When you’re taking out enemies, things feel great, however, when you can’t make your character do what you want, it can be frustrating. 

Drunken Fist features a unique graphical style. Using Unreal Engine, the game features simple 3D polygonal graphics for the variety of character models. The environments are all cityscapes set at night time - fitting for drunken escapades. Although this game is not going to blow you away on the visual front, the lighting in these nighttime environments looks really impressive. The real stars of the game for me are the physics, which for the most part, are pretty well done. To top that off, the game runs at a smooth framerate and has decent sound design. Even with that said, there may be times when your character might get caught up on a wall, or another part of the environment, which can make body parts do weird things. Not a deal breaker, but noticeable. 

Drunken Fist on the Nintendo Switch is a funny game that has a fun visual style, funny animations and a pretty good physics engine. The controls are fine for the most part, but the unspoken cool down for some of the moves might prove to frustrate some. If you have some patience and like the visual style, you might have some fun with this one. For everyone else, you might want to wait for a sale.