It seems like as long as Bandai Namco are going to promote beta periods for forthcoming fighting games, I’m going to find things to talk about here. I played the Dragonball FighterZ beta in January of last year and enjoyed it enough to buy the full game… and even today, I think it’s one of the best modern 2D fighters of this generation. I tried to get in to the Jump Force beta programme as well, but unfortunately I never made it past the opening menus, so I wasn’t able to publish any words about that particular experience. Back to the present, I received an invite to the One Punch Man AHNK beta sometime on Tuesday; the invite email included links to download keys (available on a first-come, first-served basis) and dates and times of the beta periods. Happily, my experiences with the One Punch Man AHNK beta have been much better in comparison to my Jump Force struggles, and so in the first available evening I jumped in and tried to make sense of this new fighter.
An overview of One Punch Man AHNK
Battles in One Punch Man AHNK take place in a 3D environment with movement in all four directions (forward, back, left and right.) Players face each other with 3v3 teams, and they can tag and switch just like in Marvel or Dragonball FighterZ. One of the most impressive aspects of this format is the camerawork – the viewpoint stays behind your active character and treats the opponent’s active character as a central point that it rotates around. This allows both characters to be kept in view even when they’re running around these open environments. The camera then closes in as distance is reduced between the characters, and once hits are landed it feels just like a regular 2D fighter. Combat has many welcome staples seen in other fighters, from an Arc System Works-style easy combo system (repeated normals produce a basic autocombo) to a “just defend” system where you guard at the last moment and get positioned behind them. Combat is fast, and a lot of combo enders have big impacts which either send opponents flying back or bouncing off walls – this invites players to chase them down and take advantage of some floaty gravity that gives them just enough time to continue a combo string.
Drain the clock
Then, of course, there’s Saitama. One of the most unusual features of One Punch Man AHNK is the “Hero Arrival System” – if a character puts Saitama on their team, he won’t be available from the start of the match. Instead, a picture-in-picture view shows him running to the fight, alongside a countdown timer that shows how long he will take to get there. As players land successful combos they can knock seconds off the timer, allowing Saitama to get there faster. When he arrives, his attacks are so overpowered that they can turn a match around instantly… but when so much work is needed to drain the clock, it’s far from a free victory. (Besides, in a post-Arc System Works world of instant kill moves, Saitama’s conditions for arriving seem quite reasonable.)
One Punch Man AHNK: a promising start?
The main aspects of the beta that I could criticise aren’t really related to gameplay – backdrops seem somewhat bland, certain effects from special moves can get a bit messy on the screen and the few moments where the camera isn’t helpful stick out amongst the satisfying tracking elsewhere. Also, I don’t know if it’s a game I could pick up easily when I’m so used to the limited movement and viewpoint seen in the likes of Street Fighter V and Dragonball FighterZ. Aside from those caveats (and the fact that this is a beta weekend and everyone playing was still learning) it was a pretty good time. Of course, if you’ve participated in any of the beta periods, let us know what you think in the comments below.