PuncheeJoe review

As a whole, society is pretty stressed out. Climbing the corporate ladder, putting food on the table, paying the bills…it’s enough to make anyone grumpy. IdeasLab understands this: in fact, they’ve made an entire introduction video about it for their new game app, PuncheeJoe. Imagine that, as a stressed person, you could buy a life-sized roly-poly doll (you know, the ones that always pop back up after being pushed), stick a photo of the source of your frustration on its head, and then use it as a punching bag with visible results. This is exactly what PuncheeJoe is like.

After you obtain a doll, you can stick a picture from your iPhone camera or from the camera roll; make sure to line up the picture’s face with the outline they give you, because you don’t want to miss out on the eye-poking action. After you’re done making the doll into the likeness of your enemy, tap it or around it to commence the violence. Each round lasts until you’ve quenched the five fires in the upper right corner; there are 8 more attacks to unlock when you hit certain points. You can even do it to your own soundtrack, and take screenshots of your handiwork to post later.

This game makes full use of the iPhone’s specialties…tapping, dragging, flicking, pinch-zoom, and shaking all turn into some sort of (violent) action. All these multi-touch features, coupled with the stylized comic action words, make it a really fun and exciting experience. In contrast, realism also plays a big part in PuncheeJoe; the action graphics (arms punching/wielding hammers, legs kicking), the bruises, and even the sound effects are very well done. It’s an odd mixture of comic book and realistic violence, but it works out as a virtual stress reliever. Unfortunately, after unlocking all the special attacks, there’s nothing more to do other than try to get more points, but perhaps this is one app where that will be enough.

Here is a video demo of the PuncheeJoe app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of PuncheeJoe was written by Julie Guan on March 3rd, 2010 and categorized under App Store, Fun, Games. Page viewed 3378 times, 2 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.