I am fortunate enough to live in an area of the country that houses a rather large BarCade. I make frequent trips to this particular establishment, and each and every visit requires at least one round of Super Punch Out. It is a classic series, hailing from the NES and SNES glory days that has been duplicated every now and then, but rarely catches the feel of the original. If you’ve never had the pleasure, it’s a boxing game that is extremely basic in the use of only a handful of buttons, but takes huge chunks of time to master. Pato Box takes this formula and expands on it, by adding an adventure style element to break up the time between bouts.

The story follows our hero Patoduck as he is double crossed the night of an important bout against his rival Kilpatrick. After being saved by a mysterious figure, he awakens at the home base of his former boss Deathflock and must work his way up the tower to find the who’s and why’s behind his attempted murder. The narrative is equal parts campy offbeat humor blended magically with dark, nihilistic tones that make for an intriguing turducken end result that pushed me through some of the less thrilling aspects of the journey, even when I was ready to throw in the towel.

The game is a unique blend of a boss rush mode with side quests and exploratory requirements peppered in to avoid monotony. The downfall to this is the vast majority of these quests are essentially the same – you must seek out specific objects and punch them, since Pato has about as much depth to him as the feathered beings he takes his namesake (and head) from as they float along your local body of water. When he isn’t punching stagnant objects, he is asked to seek out various items for NPCs that hold the key forward. These quests all eventually feel like busy work or distractions from the main goal, which is finding the boss of the floor to proceed up the tower on your quest for revenge.

The actual fights are the meatiest and most enjoyable aspect of the game. Using basic combos in addition to the directional buttons to vary your attacks, you’ll need to memorize the enemy patterns and play the defensive game more than anything. Pato can only take so much damage before keeling over and requiring you to start the fight over. Even when you’re clearly winning a battle by a landslide, the AI will manage to pull off special moves that would never fly in a more grounded game that can be an instant K.O. Each fight is a difficult, yet manageable affair that will require patience and perseverance; button mashers beware, this tactic will get you nowhere. In the event that you fall, the saving grace is that you can simply replay the match via checkpoints. Sadly, these don’t save your progress if your feathers get ruffled and you need to take a break.

The lack of a proper saving feature became very problematic for me early into the game, not only because I would have to completely restart a number of the more annoying side quests (avoiding some lasers) from scratch, but due to how the exploratory elements are handled in conjunction with the unique visual style. The entirety of the game is displayed like a love letter to Frank Miller’s Sin City using black and white tones exclusively. This is all fine and good during the actual battle segments, but the slightly panned out view, the bobbing motion during movement akin to the OG Doom, and repeated tile patterns on the flooring caused me to have worse motion sickness than any flight simulator to date. Since I couldn’t save the game as I saw fit, my thirty minute to an hour sessions often required me to pause the title and walk away for a bit.

As I mentioned before, the game is displayed entirely in black and white, coming across like Madworld’s cartoony cousin. Aside from the motion sickness issue I mentioned above, I absolutely love the design. The two toned choice is sorely underused in the gaming industry and this stands out as an example that it can work if done properly. This stands out even more in the motion comic book style mid-floor cut-scenes. The only area that really needed some polish here (I am taking responsibility for the motion sickness and not holding that against the developer) is the text boxes. I know I am probably in no place to judge others on their grammar, but there are typos and issues galore in the story segments which would make a grammar Nazi’s head explode. These errors didn’t negatively impact my enjoyment of the game, but did manage to distract me from the overall narrative.

In addition to the story mode, there is an arcade option in place for those who wish to skip the narrative entirely (which I would discourage, since its epic). The battles don’t play out any differently, but the secondary mode succeeds in giving you the much needed practice before setting forth into the main story. Once completed, there is little reason to revisit the story, unless you are a completionist that would like to seek out the Pato Coins, which don’t add anything to the overall experience aside from the trophy unlocks for finding X number of them.

Pato Box does have it’s fair share of short comings, but does succeed in offering a delightfully weird story mode and solid arcade style boxing, even if everything in between is lacking. If you’re a fan of offbeat writing or the arcade/NES game that it took inspiration from, this is a title that shouldn’t be missed.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Intriguing Story
• Challenging Boss Encounters
• Black and White Design

Cons

• Tons of Grammatical Errors
• Unimpressive Side Quests
• Poor Auto Save Mechanics

Pato Box was developed and published by Bromio in association with 2think design studio. It is available on NS, PC, PS4, and PS Vita. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Pato Box, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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