Iron Fisticle review (PC): Two fisticles are better than one

Release Date: September 16 (worldwide)
Platforms available on: PC
Developer: Confused Pelican
Publisher: Curve Studios
Genre: Arcade action

Iron Fisticle is built on fond memories of playing games like Smash TV at the local arcade.

Like those classic arcade games, Iron Fisticle puts you and a co-op partner in a gauntlet of single-screen sized rooms as you blast through waves of monsters.

In fact, calling it a gauntlet seems quite appropriate, given that the classic game Gauntlet appears to be another of Iron Fisticle's inspirations. Particularly in the game's appearances, as your knight chucks axes at waves of zombies and skeletons while descending floor by floor through a fantasy dungeon.

Harkening back to those classic arcade days, Iron Fisticle only lets you attack in eight directions. When using a keyboard that means you'll be aiming with four keys similar to how you control your character instead of aiming with the mouse. If you're using a controller you can still use the right analogue stick, but your aiming will snap to the 90 or 45 degree angle closest to the direction you are pressing.

It gives the game a stiff, mechanical feel, though not in a bad way. Since the aiming will always lock to a 90 or 45 degree angle, your movement becomes essential as you align those angles to hit the approaching enemies.

Iron Fisticle never wants you to be standing still, whether it's nudging your aim or dashing to pick up power-ups.

Iron Fisticle can still shine for single-screen co-operative play, since having a friend along allows for co-ordination that cuts through the monotony.

Fantastic scoring mechanics also encourage risky movement for greater rewards, as most enemies will drop food that extends your score multiplier. You have to constantly pick up food on a timer to keep your combo going, but with the way enemies swarm it is easy for food to get surrounded as quickly as it drops.

Wiping out a swarm and maximising your combo with the spoils straddles the line between being satisfying and building tension, since you now have to be quick and keep collecting food to maintain the combo.

It creates that fine balance of risk and reward that the best arcade classics thrived upon, as you will try to lead enemies away from any food or dash into a swarm to keep your combo going before the food vanishes.

Your score isn't just for leaderboards though, as Iron Fisticle also uses your score like experience points to earn levels while you play.

Levelling up is how you unlock new power-ups, which are unlocked permanently so that they can appear the next time you play as well. You can also earn stat boosts that carry over to future play sessions, giving the game a feeling of persistent progress even if you are stuck struggling to pass a certain floor.

Iron Fisticle is set up wonderfully to be a modern return to classic arcade gaming, but then stumbles a bit in its actual execution.

Rather than having enemies appear in any recognizable or interesting patterns like the arcade games that inspired it, Iron Fisticle goes for random generation in its levels and enemies.

An entire wave of enemies will just spawn into a room with a rather random spread, predominantly of a single enemy type that trudges in your direction posing a threat more from sheer numbers than anything else.

New enemy types with various movement and attack patterns are introduced as you continue to play, but at a slow rate that ultimately leaves most rooms feeling much the same as one another.

Iron Fisticle never wants you to be standing still, whether it's nudging your aim or dashing to pick up power-ups.

There are occasionally special rooms, like a graveyard where you need to destroy vases rather than enemies to find a key to the next chamber, but with so much of the game built around constant movement it never quite feels right to have a room focusing on stationary targets.

In between rooms you can also encounter either a shop to buy stat upgrades or a ridiculously challenging side-scrolling stage that awards a power-up if you survive.

These diversions attempt to break up the game's inherent monotony, but only the shop really feels like it fits in with the rest of the game.

Iron Fisticle is mostly successful in capturing the feeling of a classic arcade game, tying in a few modern sensibilities for persistent character stats and power-up unlocks.

Iron Fisticle can still shine for single-screen co-operative play, since having a friend along allows for co-ordination that cuts through the monotony.

But while the random enemy patterns were intended to extend replayability with a different challenge each time, the way they are actually implemented ends up making levels feel more uniform.

3

Iron Fisticle