Mechanically, Trio the Punch is quite poor. It's a beat 'em up which is both super basic, with a single attack button per character, very simple enemy designs and a very weak feedback on hits and damaging an enemy. Game strategy rarely gets any more interesting than very simple whiff punishing, like im playing Rogue Legacy 2 or Dead Cells. I do not want to play more Rogue Legacy 2 or Dead Cells.
So it's a good job Trio the Punch is impressively stupid. In each of it's minute long stages, you will start by beating up a number of Karnovs - the large, fire breathing Data East mascot inexplicably turning up about 100 times over the course of the game for... reasns? - then face a boss, which could just basically be anything from a simple gargoyle to a giant foot, to an angry man who gets mad at you hitting his tortoise shell, to a sheep. Then after winning, you get sent to a roulette wheel of powerups, which you're practically unable to influence. These include powering you down, at which point you are told "BAD CHOICE". Then, for some reason, the sheep boss might have just cursed you into being a sheep for the next level on it's death, but the sheep is also obscenely strong compared to the standard Trio. And then you get attacked by a bunch of giant heads in a stack. And sometimes the game can just decide to make your sprite tiny or force everything on screen to stop moving, or fuck knows.
The dedication to the bit is key here. On the face of it, Trio the Punch is like Parodius, Rainbow Islands, or Space Invaders 95, where it's a send up of the companies' games and tropes, but those games still have structure, are usually reverant of those properties and are also competent, or are least trying to be kind of fun in those cases, the joke is on Konami and Taito respectively. In Trio the Punch, i am 100% convinced the joke is on the player. A credit of Trio the Punch is likely to consist of a few gags that land, a few that dont, and a constant stream of the game taking the piss.
It's like pre-paying for a restaurant and finding out upon arrival that you have to eat out of a cement mixer. Yeah, its kinda funny at first, but you also have to eat out of a cement mixer. But then again, the very fact that you, the fool, are actually going through with it, becomes funny itself.
Trio the Punch is not a good game, and it's gags dont always hit. But as a sheer act of disrespect and as a wild trip for a player to go down, it's great. Data East might have pranked you, but there is often as much joy in the recipient to being dunked at the fair as there is to doing to dunking. And to be the one who's dunkedd in a game, is a rare experience indeed.
So it's a good job Trio the Punch is impressively stupid. In each of it's minute long stages, you will start by beating up a number of Karnovs - the large, fire breathing Data East mascot inexplicably turning up about 100 times over the course of the game for... reasns? - then face a boss, which could just basically be anything from a simple gargoyle to a giant foot, to an angry man who gets mad at you hitting his tortoise shell, to a sheep. Then after winning, you get sent to a roulette wheel of powerups, which you're practically unable to influence. These include powering you down, at which point you are told "BAD CHOICE". Then, for some reason, the sheep boss might have just cursed you into being a sheep for the next level on it's death, but the sheep is also obscenely strong compared to the standard Trio. And then you get attacked by a bunch of giant heads in a stack. And sometimes the game can just decide to make your sprite tiny or force everything on screen to stop moving, or fuck knows.
The dedication to the bit is key here. On the face of it, Trio the Punch is like Parodius, Rainbow Islands, or Space Invaders 95, where it's a send up of the companies' games and tropes, but those games still have structure, are usually reverant of those properties and are also competent, or are least trying to be kind of fun in those cases, the joke is on Konami and Taito respectively. In Trio the Punch, i am 100% convinced the joke is on the player. A credit of Trio the Punch is likely to consist of a few gags that land, a few that dont, and a constant stream of the game taking the piss.
It's like pre-paying for a restaurant and finding out upon arrival that you have to eat out of a cement mixer. Yeah, its kinda funny at first, but you also have to eat out of a cement mixer. But then again, the very fact that you, the fool, are actually going through with it, becomes funny itself.
Trio the Punch is not a good game, and it's gags dont always hit. But as a sheer act of disrespect and as a wild trip for a player to go down, it's great. Data East might have pranked you, but there is often as much joy in the recipient to being dunked at the fair as there is to doing to dunking. And to be the one who's dunkedd in a game, is a rare experience indeed.
Reviewed on May 21, 2022