Fighter management sim Punch Club 2: Fast Forward busts out new gameplay footage
Raise your hands, clench your fists, and check out the latest from Lazy Bear Games' fast-firing follow-up
Fighting management sim Punch Club 2: Fast Forward has showcased new footage at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase Powered by Intel.
Following its 2016 forerunner, Lazy Bear Games and TinyBuild's rags-to-Rocky story simulator sequel swaps the first game's 1980s and 90s setting and aesthetic, for a neat-future synthwave-like era, that's chock-full of holograms, cyborgs and dodgy corporations that you can take on or takeover.
In this new slice of almost-two minutes' worth of footage, we're shown some of Punch Club 2's settings, menus, fighting styles, and activities as you chart your search for stardom. Whether you're a natural Taekwondo specialist, a Scorpion fighter, an Arrrkido enthusiast or something else entirely, the aim of the game here is to work hard and fight harder in world that's described as "inspired by the '80s, cyberpunk and corrupt."
Through this, you'll manage just about every aspect of life in this dystopian future. Looking after your time and money are the two big ones, but in doing that you'll inevitably spread your time managing your ascent of the local fighting leagues, solving crimes around the district, working alongside the police and the mob and the mafia and just about anything else who offers you cash for work. As per Punch Club 2's Steam page, completing quests will in turn net you money, grant you access to new fighting schools, teach you new combat moves, and, weirdly, let you rent the totally-not-ripped-off 'Lion Queen' movie on VHS.
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is still without a concrete launch date, but is gunning for release at some point in 2023.
If you’re looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.
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Joe Donnelly is a sports editor from Glasgow and former features editor at 12DOVE. A mental health advocate, Joe has written about video games and mental health for The Guardian, New Statesman, VICE, PC Gamer and many more, and believes the interactive nature of video games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform. His book Checkpoint considers the complex intersections of video games and mental health, and was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book of the Year for non-fiction in 2021. As familiar with the streets of Los Santos as he is the west of Scotland, Joe can often be found living his best and worst lives in GTA Online and its PC role-playing scene.