UFO 50 Retrospective Part 33 - Fist Hell
WITH THE HEART, THE HEART OF THE DRAGON
It’s been a little bit, we’ve got another game in the Partyverse! You can tell, because Amy is here. She’s the protagonist of Party House, and is in Hot Foot. You can also see the gym from Hot Foot, along with “GO GATORS!” signs. It’s cute. Anyways, on to the game.
Fist Hell is a belt scrolling beat em up, most clearly influenced by Double Dragon and Kunio-kun, ESPECIALLY with the sprite art for the latter. In Fist Hell, a zombie outbreak is occuring! The zombies have kidnapped Jay’s mom, who was running for mayor. The current mayor is on the case, but he clearly can’t be trusted, so Jay calls his friends up and goes on a rampage to save his mom!
You’ve got four characters, as I said, Amy is here, but the only real character to play single player is Jay, IMO. Everyone else is just too weak. This is a BRUTAL beat em up, and any advantage you can have to tide the swarm faster is one you should take.
It’s a simple two button beltscroller. You’ve got your jump, you’ve got your punch. If you walk into someone while punching them, you’ll grab them, and then with a direction and a punch you can throw them. This will be required for at least one boss. You’ve also got a jump slam you can do with the grab, I never found it super useful. There’s also food pickups, of course burgers and pizza and fries, and money pickups. After each level, you can buy either a full heal, or a powerup. Yes, you don’t heal inbetween levels. There aren’t many levels, but this makes the game even harder than it already is, and it’s hard. I know it took me a long time to get good enough to even beat level 2, I just kept bleeding health getting to that point. Learning tricks and strategies helps, though.
You have VERY classic hit stunning in Fisthell, where if you don’t finish your combo, just punch thrice, wait for a second, then continue, you don’t kick them away, and can just stun lock them down. This, on top with taking advantage of how you have more vertical range up than enemies do down, means that you can hit enemies safely and lock them down. This does apply to you, though. I found the safest thing was to just hug the bottom of the screen, most of the time.
I don’t like beat em ups. I find them pretty boring, honestly. You punch a guy, wait for them to get up, and then punch them again. Do this for 2 hours. Fist Hell isn’t 2 hours, and the enemies go down fast enough that there’s not much waiting. It’s constant action. It’s okay for what it is, a perfectly fine beat em up. Even if that’s not entirely my thing.
7.5/10