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 Punch Club was released in 2016 by Lazy Bear Games, and a later free update added the "Dark Fist" subtitle. The game was a modest success and is, in my own very biased viewpoint, the game that put Lazy Bear Games on the map. Punch Club is a boxing tycoon/time management game for the PC and Steam in which players have to balance their character’s training and needs. It’s also a massive love letter to lots of old media, with a treasure trove of references to movies and video games. I don’t think that Punch Club is winning any awards, it’s a relatively basic premise with retro graphics and a simple gameplay loop. But I like it and think it’s a perfectly charming little game. The time management aspect makes it an interesting challenge for speedrunners, completionists, and people who want to see big numbers go up. Also, it’s short and sweet which is something I desperately need after the ordeal that was my last LP. For this LP I’m going to run through the story in Normal mode. As a treat, I’ll be leaving a few things in the hands of the goons, a terrible decision I know. But I think it will be fun. Since Punch Club has an absurd amount of references, I’m going to try and keep track of The Reference Box. If you think you know what something is a reference to, call it out. I’m going to try and keep a running tally of how many references are in the game. I fully expect it to hit double digits within the first 2-3 updates. Now without further ado, let’s get punching. Updates Update 1: Prototype Rumble Update 2: Meet Survivor Update 3: Broken Legs, Enduring Dreams Update 4: Roy's Our Boy Update 5: The Power of Love and Violence The Reference Box Stoney movie poster: Rocky "Your Clothes, your boots and your motorcycle": Terminator 2 Mick the trainer: Rocky (Spotted by Just Winging It) Middle poster in the garage: Bloodsport (Spotted by Berryjon) Apu's name and design: Simpsons and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Spotted by Koorisch Boxing Poster Design: Boxing. Raiden Maniquen: Mortal Combat Donatello Maniquen: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Indiana Jones Maniquen: Indiana Jones Shredder Maniquen: TMNT Turtle Shell: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Hockey Sticks and Mask: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Dual Sai: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Mr. T brand cereal: Mr. T (Spotted by CzarChasm) A-Team Van: A-Team (Spotted by CzarChasm) Forrest Gump Smiley T-shirt: Forrest Gump (Spotted by Fat Samurai) Poster in Main Character's House: The movie Cobra (Spotted by Czar Chasm) Casey Cameo: Casey Ryback from Under Seige (Spotted by Just Winging It) Tyler Cameo: Tyler Durden from Fight Club (Spotted by Just Winging It) Mr. Y: Potential Mr. T reference? I think it could also be Mr. Y= Mystery. (Proposed by macdjor) Bill the Teenage Mutant Ninja Alligator: TMNT. Obviously. Roy Jackson: Ray Jackson from Bloodsport (Spotted by Hobojim) Song Mo: Tong Po from Kickboxer (Spotted by Hobojim) Hexor Lamancho: IRL Boxer Hector Camacho (Spotted by Hobojim) Champ Arcade Cabinet: Karate Champ (Spotted by Hobojim) Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta cameo in Casey's shop: Pulp Fiction (Spotted by Hobojim) glwgameplayer fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 04:42
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Update 1: Prototype Rumble Your potential is limitless. Take care of your amulets. They will help you to uncover your abilities.  (The amulet shines)       You have to be strong… stronger than me. Promise me you will train hard. And when the time comes, you have to be ready.  So, kid… you’re alone now. Just like me. Your father lent me a hand when I was in trouble. So now it’s my turn, I’ll take care of you. Deal?   After the introduction our story begins as all great stories do, waking up hungry on someone else’s couch. Meet Rumble, he’ll be our protag for this update. I’ll be using this one to run through the first couple of days and introduce the primary gameplay.   Off to a good start! This game does have dialogue options, some of which are of great importance, and some of which aren’t. Regardless of what Rumble says, Frank is going to force us to get a job, so I just tell him we’ll get to work.   We’ll get to that later. Right now Rumble wants to start the day with a workout and some breakfast. I click that door off to the left…  And we’re in the garage. This is where we can spot the first of many references, in this case, the poster for “Stoney” which is of course a reference to “Rocky.” The other posters probably reference one thing or another but, I can’t identify them. Anyway, we click the mat to start working out.  This mat allows us to do pushups, which slightly boosts all of our stats. Those colored orbs rising out of our character represent the stats being gained, red for strength, blue for agility, and green for stamina. As soon as those orbs reach the top of the screen, they’ll be added to our stat bars up there. Pushups slightly increase all stats, which makes it one of the worst exercises in the game. But we’ll get to that later.  After doing a couple of pushups poor Rumble is already hungry and has gained almost no benefits from working out. In the top left is our character’s needs. The heart represents health, the chicken leg represents food, the smiley face represents happiness, and the lightning bolt represents energy. Most actions take energy and food, but exercising in particular puts a strain on our hunger meter. As our belly was already almost empty when we started exercising, we can no longer work out. So now it’s time to get breakfast. We click the door at the back of the garage to leave.  I hope so, Rumble. We don’t have a lot of money if we need to go feed ourselves. Anyway, clicking the fridge brings up our food stock.  Not the healthiest meal but we’ll take it. Normally I’d devour everything in the fridge to fill our bars, but since we’re still in the tutorial Rumble decides that a single frozen pizza is enough for him.  Okay, now I'm ready to find a job. Let's look at that newspaper. Like before the grey orbs appear, but this time they are going up to our needs to signify that we are gaining them instead of losing them. I tried to thread the needle, and take a screenshot while the grey orbs were still visible and Rumble was still talking. It cut off the last word of his sentence, but it was going to be newspaper anyway.  Sadly we don’t get to look at the newspaper or anything. We’ve got a job now, though Rumble doesn’t seem too happy about it.  That blue icon with a city on it leads to the city map, so we click that and…  The City is a little barren right now. We don’t know all that many places to go. Just Home, Work, and a Store. I guess our new job is as a construction worker.  After clicking the location we want to go, work in this case, we can choose to either travel by bus or walk. Walking takes time while using the bus takes money. However, in this case, it doesn’t matter. Whichever option we pick…  I feel as though this is a Terminator 2 reference. Anyway, we’ve been accosted by these two thugs! But Rumble is a brave man, who’d never run away from a fight!  Rumble what the hell? I was just singing your praises!  See! It didn’t even work! I’m sure you can handle it though Rumble. This is what we did all those pushups for!  … Yeah we’re dead. There’s no getting out of this. New characters start with a random selection of skills from the 4 basics. Rumble here started with punch and block. I equip those to our two empty skill slots, pray for him, and then click fight.  Every round starts with this little effect over the two fighters at the top of the round. Competitive matches usually have a limited number of rounds, but since this is a street fight, the battle goes on until one of us goes down. Something I should specify. I’m not in control of Rumble at this point. I can select his skill loadout, but once the battle starts I just have to watch him fight. He’ll use whatever skills I’ve given him to the best of his abilities, but the fight is out of my hands.  Rumble starts with a right hook. You can see the skill icon flashing in the top right to indicate that it’s in use, as well as the big comic book action bubble telling us how much damage we did. Only 148 punches to go Rumble!  Owww! Big Bo hit us with two punches, which is why the action bubble has “combo” in it. That bubble is the total damage of the two punches. The first one slipped by, but as you can see Rumble managed to block the second. After this Rumble actually manages to land a few good punches, battering Big Bo around. But Big Bo winds up a swing with his bat and…  Yeah, that’s to be expected really. I’m kind of amazed we lasted that long anyway.  At the end of every fight, we get a status screen, showing us our health and stamina in relation to our opponent’s. We actually had a stamina lead over Big Bo for most of the fight, but without a way to capitalize on it he just kicked the poo poo out of us. Also as you can see we lost health. At the end of a fight you’ll lose health based on the damage taken during the fight. Though as a tutorial fight Bo was kind enough to leave us banged up instead of broken in half.  Yes Rumble. You should.  The “goals” are a way of checking your progress. The icon flies off to the left to enter our notebook, which keeps track of our progress and gives us hints on where to go next. Naturally getting in a fight is step one.  I was planning on saying something sarcastic here but, honestly, we did pretty well considering the circumstance. Glad we could impress you old man.  This is actually a pretty important choice. Whichever one we pick gives us a permanent perk. If we pick one of the first two, we get a permanent buff to our punching or kicking abilities, don’t ask me by how much, no one really knows. If we pick skinny but quick, we’ll take a permanent hit to our damage resistance in exchange for superior dodging skill. Rumble is a punching man so…   It seems we impressed the old man enough for him to give us an offer!   And an errand I guess?   This whole altercation apparently took place 5 steps from our house, because the map screen opened again and we’re back at home. Since the Grocery Store is closer, we’re gonna walk there first  We haven’t even talked to him yet but I guess seeing his face is enough for us to have “met” Apu. Also, I’d like to call attention to the shirt Rumble is wearing. This is what he tends to wear in settings where having his shirt off would look bad.  Rumble: “Hi there, Mick asked me to tell you that he’s still waiting for his meat delivery”  And that’s the end of that. Now we can talk to him again to see what he’s got in stock  Meat is the most cost-effective means of feeding yourself, basically being $1 per 2 points of nutrition. Pizza is only slightly less effective for food, in exchange for being more effective at restoring health. Somehow. Soda sucks, don’t buy it. Energy Drinks aren’t useful for nutrition, but if you have money to spend and want to save time, chugging a few cans will restore your energy. The food is magically delivered to your home, so we’ll have to go back to the fridge to eat it. I buy a pack of meat and a pizza, foolishly forgetting that we’re about to need $10 in the future.  We walk to Mick’s office and go say hi. Just like before walking into the room is enough to count as meeting him.   This room is covered in references. Can you spot them all? Off the top of my head I see a reference to Raiden from Mortal Kombat, Shredder and Donnie from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I’m pretty sure that’s Indiana Jones on the end there. Oh right, what was Mick talking about? Making us a champ or something.  I would complain about having to prove our worth but. Considering how we got folded by Big Bo he has every reason to ask us to prove we aren’t incompetent.   Another person to visit! A proper gym seems like a great place to start increasing our stats. Since we’re still stuck at 1/1/1.  At least Mick is nice enough to offer to feed us. Indeed, if we come back to his place while we have minimal money and an empty stomach, he will feed us. But only a few times, after that we’re on our own.  If nothing else all this walking around is giving us great cardio. Silver’s Gym isn’t too far away so it’s easy to get there. Hi. Mick said that I can train in your gym.   Hm. Big Mick. I thought he didn't care about boxing anymore. I am Silver. I guess you can try here... for now. Not the warmest reception but, we’re some scrub off the street he has every reason to be wary.  Silver: I think Mick told you about our Rookie League. You’re free to participate   It looks like you know how to fight. Do you want to spar with me? There's another "choice" here but. There's only one right answer. Fighting Silver.  Silver has completely equal stats, and his ability spread is all 4 basic skills. Punch, kick, block, and dodge. He can use all of them with equal proficiency, but he has absolutely no advanced techniques to his name. Just mastery of the basics.  Since this is just a training match it only goes on for 3 rounds, and since Silver has devoted half his skills to blocking and dodging, he doesn’t deal much damage. So I just kick on 4x speed and see what happens. Which is mostly Silver dodging all our strikes. Something interesting does happen in the 3rd round though.  See, Silver has devoted a lot of his energy to defense. Every time we take a swing, he automatically responds with a block or dodge, and his stamina expenditure is higher than ours. So in the third round, we manage to wear his energy down to single digits. Then we go for a knockdown. If you attack an opponent and their energy is nearly empty, you have a chance of knocking them down. This hit dealt 10 damage and knocked Silver flat on his rear end. The instant he stands up the round is over. We still lost, but in a way didn’t we also win?  We took a few knocks so we lost a little health, but as a sparring match, we still didn’t take that much damage. Also, Rumble gained a little happiness. This man gains joy from bloody knuckles.  Not bad, but you're out of shape.You can train in my gym, not for free of course. But since you know Mick, I'll give you a discount. Thanks, Silver. We now have access to a place to train!   Don't ask me why Clippy’s eyes are red. He just comes bearing a tip, that we can sign up for a fight now! Which I'm going to do immediately.  Here’s a list of our competitors! Most of these guys aren’t that much stronger than we are. This is the rookie league after all. Normally I would immediately set to training, but I forgot the entry fee was $10. So before we can do that, we have to go to work.  I zip back home to eat and then we go to work. Working spends food, happiness, and energy to fill up the green bar there. When the bar is full, you get $50. The bar has 10 segments, each of which takes a chunk of time, food, happiness, and energy.  This is what we look at after spending what is effectively a full day at work. $50 richer, but we’re tired, and a little bit cranky. But now we can pay the entrance fee so we go back to the gym  Pay the entrance fee…  Welcome to Silver’s Gym. We’ve got a speedbag, punching bag, weight bench, treadmill, weights for squats, jump rope, a… I guess you would call it a pushup bar? And a tire with a sledgehammer. I'll go into more detail later, but for now, I pick the tire and sledgehammer for our first spot of training, and after a little time passes, the day is over.  Now is as good a time as any to introduce you to the mechanic which some people hate and some people love, stat decay. It starts small, and raising your stats to 2-4 is relatively easy. But as your stats get higher the stat decay will get bigger and bigger. It’s entirely possible to just barely reach a stat threshold, and then immediately lose it the next day as stat decay kicks in. I don’t hate it. It applies a little pressure and makes time management a real threat since you can lose progress. But it is a little annoying, and I’m kinda glad Punch Club 2 did away with it.  Rumble spends all day in the gym working out, and then heads home to eat and catch a nap. We managed to boost Strength and Stamina in time for the fight.  For the first time, we face someone weaker than us. Song Mo is the same level 1 scrub that we used to be, though by now we’ve gained some strength and stamina. They even have the same punch and block that we have.  It takes 4 rounds, but we defeat him. We won!  Rumble is ecstatic! We won a fight for the first time! But this is just the beginning, the first hurdle. The others won’t be so easy. It’s not going to be enough to be physically strong. Rumble has to learn too. When we get home the phone is ringing again. Rumble picks it up, and we get to talk to Frank.  I left my own fighting guide on the table. Maybe it will help you! (For some reason it shows up as a thought bubble, but I assure you that’s Frank) The fighting guide is that little brown book on the table. I’m just going to present it without commentary.         Now, to condense all that down. Strength increases damage and energy cost, Agility increases accuracy and evasion, and Stamina increases stamina regen and damage resistance. Raising all 3 stats is costly and difficult due to the way stat decay works. It will gradually become harder and harder to keep them all up. Instead, it’s best to pick a stat you wish to specialize in, a secondary stat, and then leave the third as a dump stat you don’t actively train. Skills are more important than raw stats. Some skills are reliant on certain stats and don’t require others. For example, all dodge skills rely on agility to work. Now, remember what I said about leaving some choices to the goons? This is what I was talking about. Rumble has served us well, but I’d like to give the goons a chance to contribute. Pick a name for our brawl-hungry hero. The character limit is 10. If we can’t come up with an alternative, I’ll stick with Rumble. Also Pick a Way to follow. The Way of the Bear, The Way of the Tiger, or The Way of the Turtle. The Way of the Bear specializes in Strength and will turn us into a hulking bruiser. We don’t attack often, and every swing cuts our energy deeply. But a single blow can crush bone and we can endure a furious assault. The Way of the Tiger specializes in Speed and will turn us into a fragile speedster. Each individual strike deals little damage and our endurance is lacking. But we possess peerless accuracy and evasion. The Way of the Turtle specializes in Stamina and will turn us into a stone wall. Our offense will be mediocre at best. But our endurance will be the stuff of legend, enemies breaking themselves upon us like waves on a beach. Reference Box This Session Stoney movie poster: Rocky "Your Clothes, your boots and your motorcycle": Terminator 2 Mick the trainer: Rocky (Spotted by Just Winging It) Middle poster in the garage: Bloodsport (Spotted by Berryjon) Apu's name and design: Simpsons and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Spotted by Koorisch Boxing Poster Design: Boxing. Raiden Maniquen: Mortal Combat Donatello Maniquen: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Indiana Jones Maniquen: Indiana Jones Shredder Maniquen: TMNT Turtle Shell: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Hockey Sticks and Mask: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Dual Sai: TMNT (Spotted by Cooked Auto) Mr. T brand cereal: Mr. T (Spotted by CzarChasm) A-Team Van: A-Team (Spotted by CzarChasm) Forrest Gump Smiley T-shirt: Forrest Gump (Spotted by Fat Samurai) glwgameplayer fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 8, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 05:47
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This seems like an interesting game, I'd like to see what this LP shows of it. I suggest a Way of the Turtle user for the protagonist. His name is The End.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:12
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Man I wanted to like this game, there's some choices made by the devs that are just incredibly not fun.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:41
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Apu here seems to be a combination of two characters.  Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  Apu from the Simpsons.
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Mar 4, 2024 14:24
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Turtle Mitch
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Mar 4, 2024 15:42
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Well if there is already Apu, let's make us Homer and go with the way of the Turtle.
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Mar 4, 2024 19:18
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Buddy knows the only real way to fight is punching only. He follows the path of the Bear and religiously skips leg day.
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Mar 4, 2024 19:36
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I get the distinct impression that picking the fighting style will be easy, just tally the votes. The name is going to be hard cause everyone’s picking different ones. Also I couldn’t help but get attached to Rumble.
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Mar 4, 2024 19:56
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glwgameplayer posted:
The middle poster is a reference to Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. I can't tell what the third one is.
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Mar 5, 2024 04:31
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so does this mean that you don't really "fight" in the game? You select your techniques, or move set, and then you just hope you made the right choices as the fight plays out without any inputs from the player? that seems...kinda antithetical to a fighting game. Anyway, I am all for us taking a rambunctious, squirrely Rumble and turning him into the unmovable, unbreakable Homer that studies the way of the Turtle
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Mar 5, 2024 08:06
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Aces High posted:so does this mean that you don't really "fight" in the game? You select your techniques, or move set, and then you just hope you made the right choices as the fight plays out without any inputs from the player? Basically, yeah.
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Mar 5, 2024 09:36
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Aces High posted:so does this mean that you don't really "fight" in the game? You select your techniques, or move set, and then you just hope you made the right choices as the fight plays out without any inputs from the player? Yeah Punch Club is more of a.... Raising/Training sim than a normal fighting game. All your preparation is done before the match. Training to raise your stats, resting and eating well to restore your HP, and learning different techniques to use in the bout. The real meat of the game is time management. The endgame achievements are mostly focused on time too, with the most extreme being to clear the game in 100 days or less.
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Mar 5, 2024 16:33
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berryjon posted:The middle poster is a reference to Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. I can't tell what the third one is. The third one looks like a poster for a boxing match. Cursory search seems that it might be one of the posters for Ali/Frazier III, though i'm having trouble figuring out if it's a real poster or not due to various copies/knockoffs. 
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Mar 5, 2024 17:30
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Mick is a a reference, down to the appearance, of Mickey, Rocky's trainer.
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Mar 5, 2024 18:30
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Pretty sure the hockey sticks and mask is another TMNT reference to Casey Jones. Same with the turtle shield and double sai. Also yes, "Your Clothes, your boots and your motorcycle" is a Terminator 2 reference.
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Mar 5, 2024 23:19
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The boxes next to the armchair and on the table in the house appear to be boxes of Mr. T Cereal Also the van in the garage is a reference to The A-Team, also featuring Mr. T. CzarChasm fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Mar 6, 2024 |
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Mar 6, 2024 22:21
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I’m feeling Way of the Tiger with Survivor as the nickname.
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Mar 7, 2024 17:10
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I'm thinking that Rock
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Mar 7, 2024 18:00
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So far we have Bear: 1 Tiger: 2 Turtle: 4 And I hope you don’t mind but unless a new suggestion catches my eye, I think I’m gonna use Buddy if Bear wins, Rocko if Tiger wins, and Survivor if Turtle wins. I like meaningful names. And I know that Homer technically “won” but. I don’t wanna be Homer. I’ll call the vote Sunday morning. No specific time just, once I’m awake enough to do it.
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Mar 7, 2024 19:58
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I tried to like the game, but the stat decay made everything very tedious for me. Pity. Will be following to see what I've missed. I think the t-shirt the MC wears is Forrest Gump's smiley t-shirt.
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Mar 7, 2024 20:00
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Alright, I was planning on calling it tomorrow morning, but the resounding silence makes me think everyone who cares to vote has already voted. Our new protagonist is Survivor the man who's going to master the Way of the Turtle. So I'll get to work on the next update when I get a chance
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Mar 10, 2024 04:16
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Update 2: Meet Survivor Day 1-Day 9 The votes are in, our new hero’s path is going to be Way of the Turtle! Technically the winning name was Homer, but I found Survivor more appropriate. I actually have a funny story to share. See, when you begin a game of punch club you get 2/4 of the basic skills. Those being block, dodge, punch, and kick. My first attempt at creating Survivor was born with dodge and kick. Two skills that any self-respecting Way of the Turtle Master would spit on.  This isn’t a huge deal, it would only set me back 3 technique points. But I don’t like the idea of being handicapped at the very start of the game. So Survivor 1 was unceremoniously murdered in a back alley.  Survivor 2 was born with punch and block, therefore he was allowed to live Outside of that, the story of Survivor is basically the same as Rumble’s. Meet Mick, meet Silver, meet Apu, Frank gives us the advice booklet, and we begin training to enter the first fighting ring. The point at which things begin to differ is right after beating our very first opponent. We gained 3 skill points we can use to spend on skills. And the first one to grab is a no-brainer.  Tactics Learner is the first step to advanced combat. Before now all we could see about techniques is their base description. Now we can see the math behind them, or at least some of the math behind them. To demonstrate, I’ll be using Punch, the most basic move of them all.  The sword represents damage. The leftmost number is the base damage, the middle number is the strength modifier, and the final number is the end result. Our damage should be 2.4, but it rounds down to 2. The crosshairs represent accuracy. The leftmost number is the base accuracy, the middle number is the accuracy modifier, and the final number is the end result. Accuracy is 3 times our agility divided by all our stats added together. In short, every point of stamina and strength slightly reduces our accuracy. Ours is 3/6, or ½ So our accuracy modifier is cut in half. It will only get worse. The lightning bolt represents energy cost. In this case, it’s 0+ our Strength. So 2. And yes, this does mean it’s possible to become so massively yolked that every punch costs more stamina than it does damage. As you can see, Punch is efficient and accurate no matter our stat spread, but it will become increasingly inefficient the more we raise our strength.  For comparison here’s Kick. Kick deals much more damage even with low strength, but it’s highly dependent on accuracy for the attack to land. As such, it’s useless for us, since Agility is our dump stat. If we were an Agility build though, this would take us quite far.  It’s worth mentioning that every purchased ability increases the cost of the next one. Tactics Learner was 1 point, High Punch was 2. If I had been smart I would have gone for Lowkick, but I’m sure it’s fine. High Punch is basically just an improved version of Punch. Higher damage, higher energy cost, and still sky-high base accuracy.  Despite our first win, the first thing to worry about is the fact that we have one singular dollar in our pocket. To fix that we go to work. From the end of day 3 to the near end of day 4 we grind away at work until we’ve got 100 dollars  Over those 2 days, we lost a good chunk of Strength and Stamina. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but as you can see the stat drain over time can be a bit of a killer. I spend all our money filling Survivor’s fridge and then realize that I messed up and now we can’t hit the gym for training. So after a nap and some food, it’s back to the construction yard for the rest of day 5.  On day 6 we finally return to Silver’s Gym, and we have some new options from him. Hand pads sparring for $15, and a sparring fight for $20. These will let us fight Silver in exchange for some EXP and happiness. Since he’d kick our rear end if we did a sparring fight, I go with hand pads sparring.  Hand-pads sparring is a perfectly safe way to gain some technique points, since Silver’s only move is block he can’t hurt us. On the other hand, this really hammers in how weak we are. We can barely scratch this man!  The results screen is also kind of hilarious since it only lasted a single round and very little damage was dealt or taken. The important thing is that we boosted our mood, and got some technique points. See, Survivor hates working. And we spent a little over a day working non-stop. If Survivor is in a foul mood, training becomes less effective. So it was important to give that a little shot in the arm. Now that we’re back above 50%, our training will be fully effective. Since our hunger and stamina are nearly full, and our next fight is later today, it’s time for a training montage!  Training is pretty simple. It costs time, energy, and food to train, in exchange for increasing those ever-important core stats. Each machine takes the same amount of time, energy, and food but may have different effects on your stats. So let’s cover all of those real quick. Starting in the top left, the Speed Bag exclusively trains agility, while the Punching Bag trains all stats with a focus on agility and stamina. The Weight Bench is obviously for raw Strength, and so is the Dip Station across from it (though I swear I’ve seen stamina too…) Now on the bottom right, the Tire and Sledgehammer train all stats, with a focus on stamina, while the Jump Rope trains agility and stamina, but is highly inefficient for some reason. In the top right, we have the Treadmill which exclusively trains stamina, and the Squat station which trains Strength and Stamina. I will not be explaining our training in detail, just saying what machines we focus on. For this one, it's Treadmill and then Squats.  Hexor Lamacho knows all 4 basic moves and has 2 Strength and Stamina. Also as you can see, since we picked up Tactic Learner we can now see the accuracy, energy regen, and armor of our opponents. Accuracy is as explained earlier, while energy regen and armor come purely from Stamina. Truth be told I… don’t know how they work exactly. I just know that more is better. Now, normally I’d say we have this in the bag. And we really should have but uh… I messed up.  At the end of the first round, I was disappointed by Survivor’s progress and opted to give him Block and High Punch for the second round. That meant no more cheap punches, but it also meant we’d deal more damage, and block to prevent taking extra damage. The thing is… we’re not an infinite energy engine yet.  Our damage output did indeed shoot up but at the cost of spending energy like no one’s business every time we took a swing. And once we were out all it took was a single kick to knock us down. I swapped back to a more conservative Punch and Block for the next round but…  Too late. We were already at a huge energy deficit.  In my defense, it’s not like we even have any of the Way of the Turtle moves yet. Survivor is still out here using street fighting moves. After sulking for a bit I decided to reenter Silver’s Gym to wash away our sorrow by working out.  That guy who’s always at the weight bench needs our help. There’s no reason not to uphold gym etiquette.  After pumping iron a few times the guy’s arms get shaky and we help him out. Like I said, gym etiquette. Fun fact, this animation for us is the same as the animation he and his normal partner use.  Yeah… good… at fighting. We sure are. Don’t look at our Win/Loss ratio, please. Survivor: “Well you know, I’m kicking rear end here and there.”  Gym Guy: "Do you know anything about Underground Ultimate Fights?" Survivor: "Not much/I fight ultimately all the time!" (Dialogue choice doesn’t matter)   Gym Guy: But be careful. You can receive serious injuries during these fights. We’ll take a look into that my guy. In the meantime, we do some training, because I have a plan! See, there’s an important skill we can get if we get 4 stamina. So we bounce back and forth on the training machines for the rest of the day…  And now our Stamina will never drop below 4! Now we can afford to spend time working and fighting without our Stamina dropping.   I guess it's that easy to get into an underground fighting ring.   Once again we’re being warned that the fights are dangerous. I don't see how much worse they could be though.  I’m sorry I keep forgetting to check out the goal notebook. Next time I’ll try and show it more often. Just know that we’re making progress, slow and steady. We can actually join the Ultimate fight right now, but I’m a bit leery of it since we just got a beating earlier. Instead, I head home.  Fluffy (the cat) "Meow… Meow…" (Yes, our cat gets a dialogue box for this) Survivor: "I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too."  We walk over to look at the suitcase and-  This looks like the kind of thing a spy might have hidden in a suitcase.  It brings up a green version of the town map but we can’t seem to get it to do anything.   Well, since there’s nothing we can do with it I eat some beef and take a nap, before deciding that we’re now healthy enough to face the underground ultimate fight.  I may have miscalculated. Or so you would think! Remember how the last guy devoured our energy until he could score easy knockdowns? We’re about to do the same thing to this guy. See, he’s got Dodge, Block, High Punch, High Kick, and the one on the end is Backlash, which means he does spike damage after dodging an attack. As you will notice, all of his strike moves are the high-power, high-cost versions.  By the end of round 1, he has already tanked his energy so hard that we knock him down just before the end of the round.  On a knockdown, we regen a bunch of energy, and at the end of the round, we do the same. In the end, he only recovers a measly 14 For round 2 he’s exchanged all of his high-cost moves for their basic variations, but it’s already too late for him to pull ahead in terms of energy. That said we get super unlucky and miss a bunch of punches. He didn’t dodge them or anything, we just missed.  The fight ends up being dragged out until Round 5, but the fight was ultimately decided at the end of Round 1. Once we had a severe stamina lead we just beat him down. This is truly the Way of the Turtle.  Since these fights are less regimented than the rookie league we earn fewer technique points, but also gain money when we win.  After Survivor’s first win, we get a glimpse of a mysterious man with a gleaming red eye… spooky.  Survivor: It seems that I’ve met him before.  Mr Y (Yes that is his name): Everyone calls him the man in black, or the Red Eye. He arranges a tournament on his island for the best of the best. He occasionally comes by here to look at the new fighters, but he only invites the champions.    Another goal for us to pursue. In addition to our professional fights, we can come here for some… less than legal battles. Anyway, since we’re beat up and a little tired Survivor goes back home for a nap-  Stop preventing me from going to bed! I need to sleep! Anyway Frank is just trying to remind us that raising every single stat sucks, and specializing in one or two is an excellent idea. But since we just now locked Stamina above 4, we’re not going to be training it for a bit.  As you can see Stamina has stabilized at the floor of 4. This is a little trick people use to shove a stat above a threshold and then keep it there. So I won’t lose any progress. Sadly doing the same to the other stats would be extremely expensive in terms of technique points, so I probably won’t do it. We'll need to maintain our muscle (or agility) the old-fashioned way. After a little more rest and some food the rest of Day 8 is reserved for preparation, on Day 9 we’ll be clashing with the same man who kicked our rear end earlier this session. I hit up Silver for hand-pad training and got some exercise in. We have enough skill points to buy a new skill, which I'm realizing I forgot to take a picture of. Whoops! TLDR it's a skill called Skip Attack, which causes your character to skip their attack phase in exchange for recovering stamina. I don’t care what build you’re using, this is extremely important for keeping your stamina in check. Even if it ends up costing you attack actions. Anyway, with this and some training, we’re ready to throw down with our old foe.  Hi Hexor. (notice how I didn't tank our stamina this time?)  Bye, Hexor.  I only swapped to High Punch when we had a big enough stamina lead that we wouldn't run out. It helped us deal the last little bit of damage we needed.  Today has been a good day. For now, Survivor must rest, and prepare for his next bout. We’ll be ending this update here for now. Look forward to me falling facefirst into early game blues… This Session's Reference Box There was probably a bunch, but none that I could identify. Notes: I hope you guys aren’t too confused by how fragmented things seem. The truth is a lot of the game ultimately boils down to running the same routes and doing the same things. Work until you can fill the fridge, fill it up, with leftover money go training, and keep your health up for fights. By the time the LP is over we will have spent hundreds of in-game days fighting and training I could explain in great detail how I spend exactly 17 ticks at the Weight Bench before I swap to the Treadmill, and when my Energy reaches 20% I can’t work out anymore and go home to sleep for 8 ticks. But getting into the nitty gritty doesn’t really enhance the experience. And the truth is half the time I just eyeball my growths and the energy costs anyway. The way that skills work in Punch Club is something I find fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. The base power, accuracy, and stamina cost of a skill, combined with the strength and accuracy modifiers can make a skill either highly viable or complete garbage depending on your stat block. For example, Punch has such a high base accuracy that even a low-agility scrub like us can make it land every time. But it doesn’t really benefit from strength, since it increases in cost faster than it does in power. Kick is highly reliant on agility for its accuracy, but strength is actively harmful as it drives up the energy cost too fast. I once bricked a run by raising my strength on an agility-focused character, only to realize that my dodges now cost a very large amount of energy. And I couldn’t drop them, I was a skinny little guy who needed them to stay alive! And thus my attempt at a hybrid build died an ignoble death. This can be alleviated with advanced skills. Most of the Bear skills for example have high base accuracy to make up for their utter lack of accuracy. Tiger skills tend to have high base power to make up for the lack of strength boosting the damage. And a lot of the Turtle skills will have boosts to accuracy or power to make up for the lack of support on that front. I guess it ultimately boils down to the advice the book gave us. Skills are more important than stats. The bulkiest man alive walking in with nothing but basic punches and kicks would get snapped in half by a martial arts master with advanced techniques. But it still feels weird to think that raising my strength can be an active detriment to my build. High-level Bear builds emulate One Punch Man not because they can, but because if they don't their stamina will drain to nothingness. I hope you guys are ready for the Early Game Blues though. The rest of the recording session went uh... poorly. Look forward to watching Survivor get his leg broken, eat a trash burger, and get in a barfight.
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Mar 14, 2024 16:37
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So, you gonna get DUNKED ON?
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Mar 14, 2024 20:35
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AtomikKrab posted:So, you gonna get DUNKED ON? At last count Survivor got his legs broken 3 times
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Mar 14, 2024 21:10
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He’s testing the extent of his durability.
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Mar 14, 2024 21:37
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glwgameplayer posted:At last count Survivor got his legs broken 3 times all three legs you say?
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Mar 15, 2024 02:17
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Figured out another reference. The poster on the right wall in Survivor's home is from the Stallone movie, Cobra
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Mar 15, 2024 22:29
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CzarChasm posted:Figured out another reference. The poster on the right wall in Survivor's home is from the Stallone movie, Cobra Good old Marion Cobretti... I love the stupid sounding names of the main characters from 80s films.
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Mar 19, 2024 21:06
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Update 3: Broken Legs, Enduring Dreams Day 10-16 I wrote this based on the memory of us doing very poorly, but actually reviewing the footage we still made progress. Just not in one particular area. We'll get to that in a minute though, for now Survivor is napping on the couch.  At the start of Day 10, we’re well rested enough that I deem us ready for another attempt at the Ultimate Fight. This was a mistake.  Jared here is precision-designed to completely destroy us. He has the upgraded Karate kicks which are better in every way than normal kicks, but require high agility to be accurate. As you can probably see, this is no problem for him. He also has Rain of Blows, which allows him to deal extra damage through guards, a low kick which reduces our stamina and agility, and the Wind Flow dodge which makes dodging cheaper at the cost of being reliant on Agility.. Also I forgot to show it, but I believe that perk makes dodging easier  After the first round, I get the bright idea to try waiting out his stamina, and it works, but at the cost of Survivor being beaten to a bloody pulp. However…  Jared here also has a new trick, the ability to vary up his commands. Specifically, he dropped the high kick and the low kick to take Skip Attack and recoup some of his stamina.  We got destroyed. It’s entirely my fault for running into the Ultimate Fights again. In my defense, Jared here is a particularly bad opponent for us since our Agility is our weakest point, and he’s packing a passive effect that reduces our ability to block.  It’s important to note, we did still get 2 skill points and $20 even though we lost the fight. However, the Ultimate Fights are dangerous, so we also pick up…  An injury. Yay…  Specifically, we have a broken leg. Surprisingly this will not prevent us from walking around town doing stuff, however, it will decrease the effect of all training types that target the legs. Pop quiz, how many stamina-focused workouts target the legs? The answer is all of them. Well, except for the tire and sledgehammer I guess, but that doesn’t really count since it trains every stat at once. Either way, we’re not increasing our stamina for a while.  To hide my shame I get the next skill on the stamina path of our skill tree, the backhanded punch. Its energy cost and damage are equal, which in our case means 6 of each. In my opinion, this isn’t worth it. Since we have a max of 100 stamina, but health can exceed 100 easily. But we need it to get the rest of the stamina skills, so I’ll deal with it. Anyway our fridge is empty, so we hobble to the store-  Robber: Do I look like a fool? Give me the rest!   I’m not sure if you can make Apu angry by picking the wrong choice or anything. I’m under the impression that you have to fight this guy one way or another. So, let’s do that  Rob is an excellent viewpoint into how stats don’t matter as much as skills. This idiot’s highest stat is speed, but instead of using the highly powerful kicks he should have access to, he’s using the generic punch skills which deal next to no damage on his 1 strength. Furthermore, instead of picking up an evade skill to go with his high agility, his only defensive option is a block.  Even with the handicap of reduced HP, we mop the floor with this guy. However, I must draw attention to the fact that our stamina has been lower than his the entire time. High Punch is still a big energy spender.    Apu: Watching you fight reminded me of an old friend. He was a great master. By the way, he needs some assistance in his restaurant.  Thanks, Apu. Can we get a discount for saving your store? Maybe a free pack of meat? I guess not. In that case I buy 2 packs of meat and we head to his friend’s restaurant.  His friend’s restaurant happens to be right next to our house, well within walking distance.  Huh? Oh right, our broken leg.  Casey: Whatever you say, kid. Anyway, that wound looks kinda dangerous. If I were you I would get it looked at. Survivor: Any ideas?  Survivor: Thanks Casey, maybe I should meet him, Casey: No worries kid, take care.  So, as you might be able to figure out. These two conversations are out of order. We’re supposed to visit Casey on Apu’s recommendation first, and then later if we come in with an injury he’ll tell us about the Chinese doctor. Personally, I like to think Casey saw us hobbling in on our broken leg and was immediately worried about us. Just completely skipped the "getting to know you" phase.  Casey: I need someone to deliver my Pizza.  Considering Casey’s idle animation is him toying with a knife, it’s fair to say he’s dangerous. Not to mention Apu implied he was a martial arts master.  Casey actually opens up a lot of options. Deliver Pizza lets us work for him. It’s the same as the construction job, except it only pays $30 and takes less time and energy to complete a shift. I don’t think it’s more efficient than the construction job though. Special Pizza triggers a special event, which we’ll get to later. “What’s new Casey?” just has us talk to him and he recites a random piece of dialogue. Order Pizza lets us buy pizza from him.   This is me before and after completing a shift at Casey’s. I’m pretty sure that it’s more efficient on energy, time, and happiness than the construction job. Another benefit is that it’s right next to our house. So instead of spending 3-time units or $6 to go to the construction yard, and then paying that again to go back home, it only costs 1-time unit to walk to Casey’s and back home. I’m not sure if all of that is worth making $20 less though…  Buying pizza from Casey is a little inefficient. Pizza fills us up half as much as meat and only costs $6 less, while Shrimp Pizza is technically the best way to recover happiness through food, but loses out on any health benefits and costs $16. The primary benefit is that we could eat and then go home, or eat and then resume working at Casey’s. Instead of having to walk or take the bus to Apu’s and then back home.  Chinatown is up in the northern part of town, quite a walk from our normal haunts.  I haven’t been mentioning it too much, since there’s usually very little motion or animation in the backgrounds. But Punch Club does actually look pretty good through the pixel aesthetic. Anyway, the only one who’ll talk to us is the short guy to the right. I checked the guy running the food cart won’t talk to us or sell us anything.   His name is listed as “Drunk Master” by the way.  Would it really be reenacting a martial arts movie if there wasn’t a scene where the injured hero is healed through some vaguely defined force/ritual like heroic spirit, acupuncture, aromatherapy, Qi, or the love of others? I don’t disbelieve in acupuncture. But I think even the most hardcore acupuncture supporters would say “No, it can’t fix a broken leg” Also it’s expensive. So, we’re not doing it.  Since we’re still full on energy and food I hit the gym, and it is at this moment that Past Me realizes that we’re stuck. Our ability to raise Stamina is shot due to our broken legs, so the only stats we can focus on at the moment are Agility and Strength.  After more than a full day in the gym our stats are… not that much higher really. I just equalized our Strength and Agility. Our Stamina went up a little from the punching back and tire training, but not by much  Luckily we’re fighting Song Mo so we’re fine.  Not really? We just kicked the crap out of Song again.  Survivor: Maybe, I really need to let some steam off after that fight. So sure, why not?  Sometimes I wonder if someone else is writing the goals. It doesn’t feel like Survivor, and I’m not sure if they have a good grasp on people’s characters   Survivor: What? Ah, yeah, hey there.   Case in point. Tyler just asked us about self-destruction, which seems weird and also I’m not sure if that’s a real thing. This is giving me “This world is imperfect…” vibes. If a random guy tries to talk philosophy to you in a video game it’s usually a bad sign.   I understand this part of Tyler's philosophy if nothing else. I'm generally fine as long as I have what I need to survive, and books, video games, or writing projects to amuse myself with. Never really understood the obsession with big cars and houses, though I do understand people who want to be fit since that has tangible day to day benefits.    For all his attempts to make it sound philosophical, what Tyler ultimately wants is for us to get into some street fights. I don’t know what that has to do with any of the things he just said. But we’re a fighter so, might as well.  This burger is a self-defense mechanism against getting soft-locked. If you become too hungry and tired to work, sleep, etc. and Mick has stopped feeding you. You can take a burger from this trashcan. It will tank your health and happiness, but it will feed you. Speaking of food, we’re hungry so let’s go home-  What now? Survivor walks over to the briefcase, and it pulls up a map of the city, with a marker over Apu’s store. So we go there,   Apu: And I was robbed by some drat bandits in animal masks. Survivor: Wow, that’s bad. So sorry I wasn’t around to protect your shop Is it just me or do I detect a little bit of… insincerity in Survivor?  Survivor: Huh, that’s really strange! Let’s get this all cleaned up. We can’t actually help Apu clean this up or anything. It’s just more set up for later. Anyway, I’m still hungry so let’s go back home-  Survivor: I guess that would save me a fair bit of time and money huh?  Survivor: Don’t worry Frank, I’ll introduce them to my fists. Frank, I am starving to death right now. If that wasn’t incredible advice that unlocked a new pathway for us, I’d hang up this phone so fast... After that little event gauntlet, we can finally eat, and Survivor immediately stuffs his face with 2 steaks. But before we go back to work, let’s look into that exercise equipment Frank was talking about.  The sporting goods store is over here, not all that far away but not exactly close either. Also, look at how full the map has gotten! Remember when we used to have like, 4 icons tops?   This is the only way I know of to get any insight into how much the training tools increase your stats. I believe that our “Strong Arms” perk is what’s boosting the strength growth on the weight bench. Also, our broken leg is decreasing the Stamina growth on the treadmill, and the growth of all our stats on the Wing Chun. Also, exercise equipment is expensive! As Frank hinted at, if we carry around too much money people will try to mug us. Despite the goal of gaining these machines to train with, we'll have to wait until we're strong enough to fend off an attempted mugging before we try to buy these. It will be helpful though. Since we’re tired we go home to take a nap, and here’s Frank again. Interrupting me. Frank, please stop.  Survivor: Hmm, why would I need to do that Frank?  Survivor: So deep Frank. Frank: Eh, suck a lemon kid. A nice SUBTLE hint that we should be checking around town for stuff. After a quick nap, I do go poking around looking for anything we’ve missed, but I think we’ve actually triggered everything we can at the moment. Aside from the stuff that unlocks after we work our way up the league, make headway in the ultimate fights, and win street fights.  Speaking of street fights, let’s get in one! You can get in a street fight by talking to Tyler back at the bar. This random guy is kinda dangerous, but not really. His stats are all lower than ours, and his primary offense is normal punches and kicks. He does have Lowkick which is pretty strong and accurate, but it’s not enough to give him an edge.  For some reason, street fights are limited to only being 4 rounds long. But anyway, we won!  This gives us enough skill points for a new skill. I consider going further down the stamina line to get Good Sneakers, which increases the effectiveness of Stamina training. But instead, I grab this.  With this, we can (and by can I mean we have to) pick a 3rd skill in combat. This is obviously pretty great, although believe it or not the fact that you must fill the 3rd slot can make it bad in certain circumstances. Our bank account is looking a little empty so I end up putting Survivor to work for the entirety of day 13. But at the end of the day, I think, we’re in decent shape right? Why not try an Ultimate Fight again?   (Tried to drain his stamina dry, but my crappy damage with the normal punch made it ineffective)  Oh… that’s why.  In what might be the lowest state Survivor has been in since the very start of his journey, he eats the burger.  Survivor spends the next few days in what can only be described as a fugue state. Driven by rage and pain, he gets into a bar fight and beats his opponent mercilessly.   (I drained his stamina with a block and skip attack heavy first round, then put in all my attacking moves)  He ends up committing a most heinous crime, stealing the man’s sneakers No one dares stop him as he enters Silver’s Gym and begins training obsessively, seemingly unaffected by the pain of his shattered leg.  Bob Dreadson eventually steps up to the plate, attempting to stop Survivor’s training through the way of a challenge to fight.  It doesn’t work.  After another day of obsessive training Survivor is ready to return to the Ultimate Fight and face his demon. But Survivor isn’t merely driven by fury, he has a plan this time.  The plan is to bait out Jared’s attack, punish with a backhanded punch, and keep Survivor's stamina high so he can land the finishing blow.  (I have no idea how we got this lucky. The backhanded punch shouldn't have hit that many times.) The plan works beautifully, every backhanded punch dealing immense damage to Jared, while allowing himself to block as much damage as possible. Both fighters are already exhausted and are swapping to less energy-intensive load-outs for the second round.  Jared deals far more damage during the second round than the first, while Survivor’s swap to a normal punch instead of a powerful backhand has crippled his offense. It’s now or never!    Honestly, I think our luck just ran out. Even swapping to the normal punches instead of the backhanded punches shouldn't have tanked our damage output that much. Jared just couldn't dodge for poo poo in the first round and then focused up in the second. Notice how he didn't take a single point of damage in the entire 3rd round? That man was dodging like he unlocked Ultra Instinct. Don’t feel too bad Survivor, we almost got him this time. And you’ve proven to everyone, including yourself, that you truly understand what it means to endure, to embody an unyielding spirit. You are ready.   Embrace the Way of the Turtle. (Not that we get any benefits from it right now. It just unlocked the Way of the Turtle skill tree) Notes: When I got started on this session I was under the impression we didn't do much of anything, but I think it's just because I was thinking purely in terms of Jared breaking our leg. 3 times. Do you think he broke the same leg 3 times? Or did he break one leg, break the other, and then the third time our first injury had healed so he broke the first leg again? I'm going to try to keep things interesting going forward, but now that we're out of the very beginning of the game I do think we're about to hit a lull where Survivor isn't meeting new people, just training and fighting.
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Mar 21, 2024 23:29
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trying to get gym equipment was what softlocked me in my first play through and no access to the trash burger
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Mar 22, 2024 00:26
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Even more cameos. Casey here is obviously Casey Ryback, navy seal turned cook from Under Siege as played by self-aggrandizing punch man Steven Seagal, and Tyler is just Tyler Durden of Fight Club.
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Mar 22, 2024 00:34
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Robindaybird posted:trying to get gym equipment was what softlocked me in my first play through and no access to the trash burger The thing is getting gym equipment is really expensive, and if you have around $150 to $200+ you will get ambushed by muggers, and if you don't beat them you will lose all your money. If that happens while you're hungry, you might not have enough money to feed yourself, and Mick may or may not be willing to feed you, if you've already used his freebies. The trash burger is supposed to fix this, but of course, if you haven't won enough fights in the minor league yet... you can't access it. glwgameplayer fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 02:59
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With a broken leg, we should have gone for the Crane instead of the Turtle.
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Mar 22, 2024 08:19
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glwgameplayer posted:The thing is getting gym equipment is really expensive, and if you have around $150 to $200+ you will get ambushed by muggers, and if you don't beat them you will lose all your money. If that happens while you're hungry, you might not have enough money to feed yourself, and Mick may or may not be willing to feed you, if you've already used his freebies. Which is *Why* I got softlocked.
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Mar 22, 2024 15:20
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'Mr Y' is, I think, another reference to Mr. T.
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Mar 26, 2024 08:56
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I'm sorry guys I forgot today was when I'd usually update, my internet had an outage, and today is when Chapter 6 of Limbus Company came out... so I've been busy with stuff. An update will be out in a couple of days, look forward to befriending Roy (properly) one of the more blatant references in the game, and meeting Roy's sister.
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Mar 28, 2024 18:12
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Roy's our boy, so I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.
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Mar 28, 2024 18:24
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Update 4: Roy's Our Boy After the last beating we took, I went back to the drawing board a little bit and tried to come up with some ideas. We need more skill points to buy skills, and we need to shape up our stats. However, due to our broken leg, we can’t focus on the stats we need. So I’m working on skill points for now. For that, we need money.   Once we’ve got what we need I head to the gym. Do you remember how we sparred with Silver at the start of the game? If we have money, we can pay to do it again to harvest more skill points. I could do a full sparring match, but since we’re hurt and our stats are less than impressive, I stick with hand pads sparring for $15 Oh also, I think I forgot to mention everyone’s animations for when they’re just standing still. So I’m doing to hurry and mention them now. Silver will adjust his headgear.  It’s not much, but it adds up. And we can come back to train with Silver once a day.  To my understanding, we were supposed to see this scene first, and it would lead us to Casey. We’ve already saved Apu from being robbed and already met Casey, but either the game forgot or the flags got confused. Apu will just move his arm behind the register. Nothing special about his animations   (We already cleared this because we already talked to Casey, I think) Survivor: Thanks. I am never afraid of work. On a hunch, I go back to the cafe, and sure enough, we can introduce ourselves to Casey again. Casey’s animation is tossing and catching his knife. Yes, this man is dangerous.  Survivor: Hi, Apu from the store told me you have a vacancy  Casey: I need someone to deliver my pizza Survivor: Sounds good to me. I deliver Pizza for a little extra money (and to unlock something for later) before going home, taking a nap, and accidentally exiting and entering the house. The suitcase is glowing again so Survivor walks over, I remembered to take a picture of the map this time.  Another sequence break, kinda. You meet this guy after losing enough fights in the professional fighting league, just like how Casey sends you to the acupuncture guy if you lose in an underground fight. As for what he does, we’ll get to that later. This guy’s standing animation includes him pushing up his glasses while they shine. Classic “scary guy with glasses” stuff. The store clerk also has an animation, but he’s just drumming his fingers.   Survivor: Actually I think I smell… crime? Doc: Yes! How did you know? Somebody has stolen my laser!   Survivor: Did you call the police? (I’m pretty sure Survivor says whatever you didn’t pick in the other dialogue option) Doc: Hmm… I don’t want them to know I had a laser in my basement. Survivor: Sounds logical  Survivor: I’ll try to find and return your laser.  This guy is weird. After all that running around it’s time for us to fight again, against Bill Spark. I’m not sure if we’ve seen him before or not, but this guy is a pushover. His only advanced move is a high punch, and his stats are about average. Furthermore, we’ve finally adopted the turtle stance, with our skills being Block, High Punch, and Skip Attack.  We completely dumpster this guy once we have an energy lead.  The graph pretty much tells you the same thing. Once we had a lead it was over for him. When he stood up from a knockdown he only recovered about 10 energy, which was easy for us to immediately rob him of. And since we were using High Punch our damage output was pretty good. Also now that we’re winning fights in the official league we’ll start winning a little money. It’s not much, but it’s good to have.  Thanks Roy! I’d like to remind everyone that Survivor’s leg is still broken from the last ultimate fight.  Roy: That was great last time right? How about going again? (To the bar)  (As if there was any doubt) Roy: That’s how it’s done!  Roy: Stop around my place sometimes, I’m always glad to see you. Survivor: Deal Roy! I’ll stop by as soon as I rest from the last fight.  (In case you haven't noticed, the game uses this to handle transitions. It's kind of blatant, but it lets them skip out on creating unimportant animations that will only be seen once.) Roy’s house is conveniently right next to ours. Let’s go say hi!   Survivor: What’s up? Roy: Well… I went to pick up my sister, but my car broke down Survivor: Dang. Bet that was a pain  Roy: She’s not really that impressed with all the fighting stuff we do… But hey! You should go say hi to her. You’re a great guy, ha-ha  Survivor: Thanks man, yeah I’ll make sure to say hello. Roy: Great! Now come on, let’s talk tactics crap, ha-ha   I’m not joking when I say this is one of the most important bits of progress that we’ll ever get. Also before I forget, Roy’s idle animation has him sip the beer bottle he’s got, and his sister will sometimes face the front of the screen or flip her hair.  In order, Roy’s options are as follows. Chill with Roy lets us hang out with him, which is the only way to spend your time that is positive in every way. Every 1 tick will give us happiness, every 3 ticks will give us 1% food and energy. Nice, and could theoretically pull you out of the hole if your fighter is too broke to eat. Better to avoid that situation though. I wish I could tell you how much time a “tick” is but all I have to go on is the clock, and different ways of spending time move along different amounts. 4 ticks with Roy is about an hour on the clock, but since the day ends once the clock is full either it’s really 2 hours or this world only has 12-hour days… It’s weird is what I’m saying. Go to the bar triggers a random bar event, some of which will give you money, skill points, health, etc. And a few of which will mess you up instead. Asking about his sister will just to advance the little subplot with his sister. We’ll get back to that in a minute. Suggest to train together will have Roy joining you for a workout, which boosts your stat growths, while suggest to spar gives us skill points by fighting Roy. However, to use either of these options, or going to the bar, we have to chill with Roy, and help him fix his car. Doing otherwise would be rude. For now, let’s introduce ourselves to his sister.   (The grammar took a bit of a hit, didn’t it? I think they meant “He’s just as braggy as he was when he was a kid”)  Adrian: I’m Adrian, nice to meet you.  Love at first sight I guess? Seems hokey to me but, Survivor seems like the kind of person who has a pretty garbage dating life. Figures he’d fall to pieces like this.  I’m pretty sure if Roy wasn’t a total bro he’d snap our neck for this.  Roy: It runs in the family! And hey, she’s smart too! Roy, we met 5 minutes ago and talked for about 20 seconds. I doubt she has an opinion of any kind on Survivor.  Survivor: I don’t know Roy… it doesn’t look like that.  Survivor: Okay Roy, thanks for the advice. Roy: No prob fella! I think hanging out with a great guy like you would do her some good. Well, Roy went to all this effort to try and set us up, might as well see it through.  Adrian: He’s not wrong… Survivor: What kind of flowers do you like?  (I don’t know what she means by this) Adrian: I’m interested in flowers, I’m collecting for a Herbarium Survivor: I get it!  (A Herbarium is an arrangement of dried flowers. If you’ve ever done that science project where you freeze insects and pin them to a board, it’s basically that but for flowers.) Survivor: Well I’d like to help you.  Survivor: Of course! I’ll search the city! Incidentally, that purple flower down there is one of the ones we need.    Survivor: Looking for flowers. Great job for a fighter huh… I’m going to set out to find those flowers, but first I remembered something else we have to take care of. So I head back to Casey, work another shift there, and ask about his special pizza. In order to trigger this event you have to work a few shifts at Casey’s. Otherwise, he’ll just say that you’re too busy. This is why I did a few shifts earlier.  Casey: Heh, I put special Indian spices in it. For my regular customers, I make pizza with extra spices. Wanna try some?  Casey: Here. Try some  (To my knowledge this doesn’t actually do anything. Outside of the events that are about to unfold. Also is it just me or does the pizza look... colorful?)  Survivor: No problem Casey, I’ll take care of this delivery.. The whole screen changes colors and warps for a transition. Which is pretty cool honestly   I think we all know where this is going.  Survivor: Hey what about the money?  Survivor: I know nothing about your agreement, I need money  (I don't remember there being a noise here. Granted I got so tired of the music that I turned the sound off so uh... take that with a grain of salt.) Somehow this isn’t what I expected to happen.  Even the narrator isn’t sure if we’re on drugs or not. I feel as though that’s a bad sign. Anyway, we’re in a fistfight with a ninja crocodile. I have a question, are they teenaged and or a mutant?  Bill is pretty dangerous at this point in the game, but nowhere near unsurmountable. He has a high kick and high punch for offense, takes reduced damage based on stamina, and can block and dodge. Also, that modifier in the middle of his skill list gives him a small counterattack when he performs a dodge.  He also has one of the few unique combat animations in the game, with his kicks being spins that look as though he’s using his tail. Most other combat animations are just variations of standard kicks, punches, and blocks.  I expected us to lose, to be honest. He gave us a hell of a beating in round 2, but as always stamina was the enemy’s downfall.  He had a big HP lead until round 3, where we tanked his stamina and then kicked the crap out of him. This is what it means to use turtle style.  Thankfully the ninja crocodile isn’t mad, in fact, he seems excited by the fight!   Did you really think a parody/”please don’t sue us” of the TMNT wouldn’t have multiple brothers coming out to fight us?   That about sums it up, Survivor. I’m saving the skill points we got from the fight for later, so for now let’s find those flowers! You can actually see the first one right now, above Survivor in Casey’s cafe.  There are 4 more flowers. Their locations are as follows. A trashcan behind the bar.  Inside Mick’s office  The corner of the warehouse (If you notice I have some extra skill points I sparred with Silver again)  And this one is in our house!  We aren’t going to cash those in quite yet though. There’s a reason for that.  Sorry for the somewhat shorter update today. I've been busy with stuff, and also this is just the best place to stop for this update. We still did plenty of stuff though, Properly befriended Roy, met his sister, got Casey’s pizza recipe, and fought an off-brand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Next time we’ll be trading in those flowers, healing from our leg injury, getting Roy to train with us, and getting our revenge on Jared! Notes: One thing that I don't like about the first Punch Club that much is the way that stamina works. See, your maximum stamina is set at 100 for the entirety of the game. Nothing you do can raise it. The actual stamina stat provides stamina recovery and defense (which, I'll be honest I have no drat idea how the defense works. I never really see attacks dealing less damage than described. And the damage and armor can't oppose each other 1-1 because otherwise, all attacks would be dealing significantly less damage.) That means that regardless of battle style stamina is going to be a huge issue for you. Bear Style users will be breaking the bank with every swing they take, Tiger Style users have high base energy costs that explode if your strength is too high, even Turtle Style users have a hefty energy expenditure, perhaps even more than Bear Style. So sometimes the best thing to do is to stick to boring normal attacks and wear your enemy out because all their fancy tricks will drain their E tank too fast. And that's a good way to win, even in real life some of the strongest fighters have lost matches to sheer exhaustion. But it feels... kinda lame, doesn't it? To have such a small amount of energy, to keep your strongest attacks in reserve so you don't tire yourself out. But if you build like I did the first time I played this game and neglect energy, you're going to get squashed. One change I'm very grateful for in Punch Club 2 is that max stamina now scales with your stamina stat. So you can raise your stamina to prevent yourself from emptying your tank in a single strike.
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Mar 29, 2024 23:52
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glwgameplayer posted:
Solarium fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Mar 30, 2024 |
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Mar 30, 2024 06:13
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