Plasma Puncher Review

Remember Osmosis Jones, that movie (and later turned television series) about a white blood cell and cold pill fighting the forces of bodily evil in animated goodness? Well, Plasma Puncher is the closest thing we’ve ever gotten to a modern videogame adaptation of that popular cartoon adventure. The game takes place in someone’s bloodstream, where your ultimate mission is to single-handedly annihilate a globular virus and its army of germs. Strangely, this guy’s immune system is so weak that only one blood cell is strong enough to do any damage. Nevertheless, it’s your job to save the world, er... circulatory system, in Plasma Puncher.

I’ve always wondered what really goes on at the cellular level when you are ill, and it seems like there’s a lot of punching involved. Plasma Puncher consists of around 20 waves where you must destroy a certain number of microbes in order to proceed to the next. After every wave or two, you’re given a single mega-attack against the giant virus boss. Now, this is one of the saddest bosses of all time. In fact, the entire game is played standing on the virus itself. He actually doesn’t fight back and just watches you kill his friends. If there’s one thing I learned from Plasma Puncher, it’s that the life of a virus is depressing, as it’s probably going to die at some point anyway.

Gameplay involves a lot of jumping and pounding the “punch key”. Since your only attack for most of the game is a multi-punch combo, tons of plasma will indeed be punched. New enemies with varying attacks, patterns, and speeds are introduced at the start of every new wave, keeping the brawling interesting. Also, mini-bosses appear every couple of rounds and add a platforming-based challenge. Lastly, each time an enemy germ dies, you get a few coins for upgrades. Most amoebas will die pretty quickly, but large amounts spawn simultaneously. Dealing with these dense crowds is the real challenge, as your health is limited to only three hits unless upgraded further. Luckily, the start of every new round serves as a checkpoint, and dying will spawn you at the beginning of the round with whatever coins you had when first starting it. Additionally, a hardcore game mode exists where you only get one life.

Progression is relatively weak in terms of upgrade tracks. Although several different attack moves can be obtained through the course of a single playthrough, many of them are useless compared to the basic punch combo you start out with. There’s no need to do a fancy jump attack when you can alternatively beat the living daylights out of every last germ with a flurry of jabs. Overall, your precious in-game coins are better off spent on health and recovery tracks rather than offensive moves.

Plasma Puncher is very polished and almost issue-free. Although my left index finger was a little sore from pressing the same key thousands of times without stopping, the game was an enjoyable experience and there’s not much to complain about. Difficulty is well-balanced since you will likely die many times, but never truly become stuck at any point. Unfortunately, the game did glitch out on me once or twice while battling an isolated mini-boss. You’re supposed to jump on these jellyfish-like cells to fight at one point, and my character kept falling through them. This was definitely a bug, and I had to reboot the game in order to fix it. The problem is minor, but might be frustrating if it occurs right before you’re about to vanquish the mini-boss.

Despite its simplicity, Plasma Puncher is satisfying. Due to a seamless response time from keyboard to screen and spot-on sound effects, beating up blobs is everything you’ve ever dreamed it to be. Evading their attacks isn’t too hard, and you’ll surely feel like the strongest white blood cell to ever live. The game has a sufficient amount of addicting content without any major low points whatsoever. Also, quite a bit of creativity and thought went into character design. I felt like Plasma Puncher could be a cartoon if it really wanted to, and the few cutscenes in the game are a nice touch. It’s one of those games that anyone can pick up, complete in a day, and have a blast while doing so. Not much is unique about Plasma Puncher, but that’s fine when just about everything else is done right.