One Finger Death Punch

Today, I'm going to provide a short review of a game that came out on Steam a few weeks ago: One Finger Death Punch. Developed by Silver Dollar Games - a designer noted for such luminous gaming gems as Try Not To Fart - One Finger Death Punch is a brawling game in which you fight using only two buttons and every person is depicted as a stick figure.

It's also, in my opinion, easily the best game to have come out so far in 2014.

So, how does one play a brawler with only two buttons? Well, enemies come at you in a continuous stream from both sides of the screen and you press the left or right mouse button to kill them. If you miss - that is, swing with no enemy to hit - you will likely take damage. If you don't kill an enemy before they bump into you, you will likely take damage. You attempt to clear every level while taking as few hits and missing as little as possible.

It's pretty much Guitar Hero with only two buttons, except you kill people in the game rather than killing other people when they mess you up while playing 'Through The Fire And Flames' on the hardest difficulty.

It sounds simple - maybe even boring - but the game is incredibly responsive and enjoyable, largely as a result of the range of stupefyingly awesome things that can occur with each button press. You'll just have to believe me - or, alternatively, watch this video. It might be a trailer, but as trailers go it's a very accurate depiction of how the game works.

Surprisingly, there's also a lot of variety - some levels work as I described, but there are also boss fights, rounds where you do nothing but toss daggers, rounds where you do nothing but deflect daggers, rounds where you kill an endless horde of enemies with lightsabers... it's really a lot of variety for a game with only two buttons.

For all that you pay five dollars.

Outside of the gameplay, there are some high points and some low points. The music is very good for the sort of game this is. There's an announcer in the background that really adds to the flavor of the game with his incredibly cheesy bad kung fu movie accent.

Low points are mostly production things. There's no good way to set up the resolution for the game, and often the game itself is larger than the window you put it in, presenting some issues with navigating menus and the like. There's no actual volume control outside of completely turning things on or off, which makes it difficult to tune well with other applications on your computer.

Also, the screen where you select levels in the story mode looks like ass.

So, yeah, even with the occasional minor issue I can't help but stand by my earlier opinion - a combination of the excellent gameplay and value makes One Finger Death Punch easily the best game to have come out in 2014 so far, and you should own a copy.