Friday, May 22, 2020

Eric Vs. 365 - Day 327 - One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows

When One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows was announced the question everyone had was how the heck do you make a fighting game based on an anime where the main character obliterates everyone with one punch. Obviously, you feature everyone else from the show besides the main character, that's how. It's somewhat disappointing that you can't really play as Saitama much, but it does do a decent enough job of fleshing out the rest of the cast - better than the anime ever did - and the brief moments where Saitama does appear are fantastic. Read more and watch gameplay here.

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows is yet another anime arena fighter ... wait, don't leave! Yeah, I know slapping shonen casts into a big arena brawler is freaking lame as hell these days, but One Punch Man does a few things differently. The game is a tag fighter where heroes and villains can jump in and out at will, which is interesting. The matches are also dynamic in that natural disasters can happen while you're fighting or random heroes or villains can show up unexpectedly, among other things. Some matches have you just killing time until more powerful heroes show up, which is where Saitama usually comes in. It all makes the game a little more interesting than a typical anime arena brawler.

The only thing I'm not happy with, really, is that you have to unlock everything by playing through the story campaign. You start out as a custom created bottom ranked level C hero and as you move up the ranks and interact with other heroes and villains, they get unlocked in the free play and versus modes. There are dozens of characters to unlock, so it's a surprisingly slow grind to unlock your favorites. The game is fun enough, don't get me wrong, but if you want to jump in and play as Saitama or Genos or someone that is actually cool, it'll take a while.


I also want to say that I really like the One Punch Man anime a lot. I don't usually like shonen stuff because it's boring, but Saitama destroying everything in one punch is exactly what I needed. I even referenced OPM in my WWE 2k19 video where my cat Mughi wins the WWE title.