{"id":30353,"date":"2018-07-04T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/pato_box"},"modified":"2018-07-04T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T19:00:00","slug":"review-pato-box-switch-eshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/07\/04\/review-pato-box-switch-eshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Pato Box (Switch eShop)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/pato_box\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/pato_box\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90767\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90767\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Primo &#8211; or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/pato_box\"><strong>Pato Box<\/strong><\/a> to his friends &#8211; is living the dream. He\u2019s a boxing champion, fighting on the biggest and grandest stages of them all. With cardio for days and the kind of physique that would leave most Men\u2019s Health cover models crying into their kale smoothies, our Primo is a sporting superstar. Oh, and he has duck\u2019s head on a man\u2019s body. Did we not mention that?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, our hero runs \u2018a-fowl\u2019 of nefarious crime syndicate\/shady organisation Deathflock, has his water spiked between rounds and ends up left for\u00a0dead in an alley with a knife through his pride <em>and<\/em> his back. Nursed back to health from the brink of death, it\u2019s up to you to take those seasoned fists over to Deathflock\u2019s HQ and fight your way through each floor to the final boss encounter.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90766\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90766\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>It might sound like a cookie cutter vengeance story, but there&#8217;s actually an intriguing (and increasingly dark) mystery to uncover that plays right into the bizarre world of Pato Box. This is a game where you\u2019re never quite sure what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not. A fever dream of violence, corny one-liners and intrigue aplenty. It\u2019s also very, very silly, but then what do you expect from a game that wears its undying love for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nes\/punch-out_featuring_mr_dream\"><strong>Punch-Out!!<\/strong><\/a> so proudly on its sleeve? From the mixture of combat and puzzles found in its boss fights to the explorable levels that link them together, it\u2019s as much a love letter to a classic Nintendo franchise as it is something new and unique on Switch.<\/p>\n<p>The visual aesthetic is the first thing that takes a confident swing at you. With its stark black and white look, it\u2019s hard to miss the similarities with the fun yet commercially unsuccessful violence simulator <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wii\/madworld\"><strong>MadWorld<\/strong><\/a>. With its 2D assets framed in a fully-explorable 3D world, it\u2019s like being able to wander out and punch something from the mind of Frank Miller or a disturbing one-shot story direct from the pages of 2000AD. There\u2019s simply nothing out there quite like it on Switch, which is a powerful selling point in itself.<\/p>\n<p>As you might expect from a game with the word &#8216;Box&#8217; in the title, throwing punches is the meat and potatoes of the Pato Box experience, with the option to unleash high and low jabs as well as the ability to block and dodge incoming blows. You can play either with the buttons mapped to your Joy-Cons, or utilise the Switch version\u2019s biggest selling point &#8211; gyro controls. Much like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/arms\"><strong>ARMS<\/strong><\/a> before it, you can pull off all the above with the correct hand movements, a setup that suits its rhythmic combat model down to the ground.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90770\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90770\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Simply throwing each Joy-Con forward will make Primo throw a quick jab, while holding \u2018L\u2019 or \u2018R\u2019 will modify it with a little more power. Moving your controllers to the left or right will make Primo dodge to either side while tilting them inwards will enable him to perform a block. It\u2019s a simple set of commands, but considering how the boss fights are more than just boxing matches, that simplicity soon gives way to devilishly tricky puzzles.<\/p>\n<p>Take Brauch, the first proper boss you\u2019ll need to battle. Before you reach her, you\u2019ll need to make your way through the swanky bar that serves as her base, battling the mechanical foes she\u2019s laid in wait for you. Navigating her lair gradually introduces you to certain mechanics that\u2019ll soon be used in the upcoming boss battles &#8211; such as lasers that move from side to side and leaping, bullet-spraying robots. It\u2019s subtle level design that weaves tutorials into your exploration without making it feel painfully obvious.<\/p>\n<p>When you finally meet said big bad &#8211; complete with a mechanical leg and a large chip on her shoulder &#8211; you\u2019ll need to fight her <em>and<\/em> dodge the familiar traps she throws your way. It\u2019s here you realise this is no mere button masher. Simply flailing your limbs won\u2019t bring this antagonist to violent justice. You\u2019ll need to watch her movements and dodge her attacks, using the split-seconds between each strike to launch a counterattack of your own.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90768\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90768\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Much like all of the boss battles to come, each \u2018round\u2019 of combat is broken up with puzzles that need a quick mind and even quicker fits. Brauch will send lasers you\u2019ll need to dodge with expert timing or electrical bolts that need to be blocked by using a sound cue to know when to pull back. There are even electrical boxes that you\u2019ll need to smash before a timer runs out &#8211; fail to do so and you could end up with a combination of the previous puzzles\/hazards that can\u2019t be beaten or dodged in unison.<\/p>\n<p>As entertaining and imaginative as these battles are, they\u2019re also merciless in their margin of error. Fail to spot a boss&#8217; combo and one blocked move will simply lead to a flurry of landed hits that send you to the mat. A lack of mid-boss checkpointing means if you mess up at any point you&#8217;ll be booted right back to the start of the fight. Later boss fights really ramp up the difficulty to a point where even learning the rhythmic nuance isn\u2019t enough to guarantee success. Hopefully, this balance is something the developer can address in future updates.<\/p>\n<p>The different floors you can explore are also a mixed bag. Everything looks eye-popping thanks to the black and white aesthetic, but with a handful of side-quests (usually involving fetching an item) some are far more enjoyable than others. Dodging traps in a slaughterhouse offers a fun if flawed aside (the 2D assets make depth perception a tricky thing), while the casino floor can start to grate fast as you scrounge for coins in order to afford the steep price to fight the man who helped stab you in the back earlier in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90769\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/90769\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Pato Box Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>These levels are good at setting up mechanics for boss fights, but they&#8217;re too inconsistent in quality to really compete with those memorable encounters. Thankfully, there&#8217;s also an Arcade mode where you can just focus on that glorious combat, with the addictive allure of achieving better ratings more than enough to keep you coming back for more punishment\/glory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>While its adventure mode-style exploration could do with a little more meat on its bones, we all know why we\u2019re here &#8211; the Punch-Out!!-style bosses. The exploration sections fail to do the\u00a0eye-catching visual style (and the story) much justice, but those brilliant big bads more than make up for it. Sprinkle in an &#8217;80s-style synth soundtrack that wouldn\u2019t feel out of place in <strong>Hotline Miami<\/strong> and you\u2019ve got a rough-yet-ready new contender on the Switch eShop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Primo &#8211; or Pato Box to his friends &#8211; is living the dream. He\u2019s a boxing champion, fighting on the biggest and grandest stages of them all. With cardio for days and the kind of physique that would leave most Men\u2019s Health cover models crying into their kale smoothies, our Primo is a sporting superstar. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}