Unstoppable Fist

In the past, all you needed to be a bad dude video game hero was a ripped denim vest, rippling anatomically incorrect muscles, flowing golden hair, and the ability to kick and punch things.

We've moved on a bit since then, but you wouldn't necessarily know it by playing Unstoppable Fist.

While the game and its star are supposed to constitute a retro parody, the frustrations of the combat can make it feel more like a relic.

The game is a highscore-chaser with a mid-'90s beat-'em-up style. You're stood in the centre of the screen, and various animals and objects fly in from the left and right, intent on doing you harm.

Each side of the screen is split into three different sections, and tapping on them will perform a high, medium, or low attack. Handily, these are the three heights that most of your assailants sneak in at.

Swiping up or down the screen performs a power move, which knocks back everything on that particular side but slows down your recovery time, leaving you open to attack from the opposite direction. Take too many hits and it's Game Over.

Tapping on the same attacks on opposite sides makes you do a double attack, leaping into the air and performing the splits to smack objects attacking in pairs. It's a reasonably clever control mechanic, but when things get tough it starts to feel a little inadequate.

On the easiest difficulty setting the fish, scorpions, monkeys, television sets, and mummified heads you're kicking and punching drift in at a sedate pace, giving you ample chance to thwack them back, but if you ramp up the difficulty you'll soon find yourself overwhelmed by a blur of creatures and bizarre objects.

The reactions to your taps just aren't good enough when you're confronted with so many things, and while the idea is a good one you'll find yourself quitting through sheer frustration.

There's potential here for sure, but Unstoppable Fist never manages to get its compulsion claws into you in the same way comparable games like Ziggurat do. Its star might be an ironic throwback, but this is a game that needs to learn from the mistakes of the past.

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