Last week we headed to Namco Bandai’s London headquarters to get a little hands-on time with a slew of their upcoming releases, including the TGS build of their new One Punch Man arena fighter, A Hero Nobody Knows.
Under the WAKKA-WAKKAs and WIB-WIB-WIB-WIB-WIBs of the world’s largest Pac Man machine, we got to grips with the world of Seitama, his incredibly mundane training regimen, and that angry fish guy in a speedo.
This was such a surprise. A Namco arena fighter is a Namco arena fighter – you kinda know what to expect, right? Gorgeous cel-shaded graphics, good quality Japanese voice acting, clean and crisp presentation, simple but deep gameplay.
Everything looks perfect; the menus replicate the corporate, semi-military feel of the Hero organization. Mugen Rider arrives on, and uses as a weapon, his bicycle, apologetic for his late arrival. Silver Fang’s black, featureless top contrasts with his ebony beard and trousers, hands almost constantly folded behind his back. Sonic attacks alongside huge purple kanji.
But… how do you do that arena fighter feel with a franchise whose protagonist’s entire premise is that he’s too powerful? He’s One Punch Man, not 10 Hit Combo Man after all.
Well how about a three on three game, where you can only pick Seitama, as character number three?
Eh? Eh? Pretty spicy right? So you and your opponent, who has also chosen Seitama are wailing on each other as Genos and Mugen Rider, both of you from the corner of your eye watching your “Seitama counter”, a screen showing how many Kilometers away the Charlie Brown looking hero is (he starts 10km away get it), whose distance can be reduced by landing long combos and counters. Nice.
And of course, when he turns up, he looks as gormless as you would expect, casually defeating any opponent he’s up against with, you know, one punch. Or, one of his 4 special moves, taken straight from the Anime; special call out to “Consecutive Normal Punches” and, of course “Today Is Special Offer Day At The Super Market!”.
Oh, and Mugen Rider has two Justice Slams; one on the bicycle, and one with the bicycle as an overhead weapon. Amazing.
What this means, for the 1 on 1 at least, is that you can play “Seitama Mode”, or load up on 3 other characters, and try to wail on your buddy as they’re still waiting for Not-AnPanMan, handicapped to only two players, before Saitama arrives. This is such a neat, story-full, genuinely clever way to reflect the source material, and provide a gameplay twist.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how this works in the story mode when the game launches next year on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.