Fist Face Fight Review

Posted by Carter Dotson on April 22nd, 2013
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad

Developer: No Can Win
Price: Free
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 5

Graphics / Sound Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Playtime: Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar
Replay Value Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar

[rating:overall]

Fist Face Fight has a marvelously alliterative title, and plenty of faces to fight with one's fist. From the creator of the Cubed Rally series, this is a game about punching ninjas who want to break the player's heart - literally. Never mind that its heart is unprotected outside of its body. That's just a bad idea. Thankfully, the player controls a giant fist who can punch these heartbreakers in their big ugly faces by tapping on the screen to move the fist where the ninja faces are.

The game starts off rather slow, as it has just 20 second play sessions that don't really go anywhere, but when the later belts are unlocked with not just longer play sessions but also more interesting enemies, then the game gets a lot more fun. The scoring system, which encourages only moving when absolutely necessary, adds to the difficulty as some of the challenges require certain scores that demand the multiplier be kept at its 9X maximum for the whole time. The enemies react in different ways, and learning how to combat each threat, instead of just frantically tapping on enemies, is the secret to success.

As a purely progression-based challenge, the game might work structurally, but instead there's a coin system, where coins earned in-game are used to unlock later levels. Even after mastering a certain level, it may still take a lot of coins to unlock the next one. Since levels have a points ceiling, this makes later play sessions particularly repetitive. It feels like a coins system could have been integrated in a better way than "pay $9.99 to unlock the last level instantaneously." The game is ad-supported and it's possible to pay to remove the ads, though they aren't very intrusive.

While Fist Face Fight is slow to get started and runs out of gas quickly, it's an amusing-enough free game to be worth a download to punch some ninjas as a giant fist.