Battle Punks

With the ever-growing popularity of Facebook games, we're starting to see an evolution in terms of presentation. More and more games are moving beyond the flat 2D cartoon-style art into the world of 3D. Granted it's not the level you would see on your PS3, but it's pretty good.

Battle Punks, which has just gone into open Beta, is one of these games, and it's quite possibly the best-looking game we've seen on the platform so far.




What Is It?
Battle Punks is a fighting game, where you create a customized player and purchase or earn weapons, shields, and ability boosts in order to up your chances for a win against another player.

Why It Matters
The graphics really are a step above most other Facebook games, and are just about to the level you would see on the Wii. By improving graphics and introducing more non-simulation elements to Facebook games, developers are widening their already huge appeal to include more hardcore gamers.

How to Play
You start the game by creating your own customized Battle Punk. You have options for hair, clothes, and skin color. Later on in the game you can purchase additional clothes with the gold you earn in battles. You start with a basic weapon and are thrown right into a battle.

You can size up your competition before choosing to battle them by looking at the number of weapons they have equipped, whether they have a shield, and whether they have any ability boosts. Once you choose to battle, the game takes control while you watch the fight unfold (it's very similar to how Spore Islands works). The strategy comes in properly equipping your character before entering battle to up your chance of winning. This becomes more challenging as you only have a limited amount of space in your inventory.




Each battle costs a certain amount of energy, and if your energy meter is depleted, you need to wait for it to fill up before taking on any more battles, or you can purchase additional energy using in-game currency, which can in turn be purchased with real money.

By winning battles, you gain experience and gold as well the option to earn additional loot, like a weapon or ability boost. As you level up, you get more health and more space in your inventory to equip weapons and boosts.

Each area of the game has a shop that will have certain weapons, clothes, shields, and boosts for sale. At these shops, you can also purchase additional map pieces, which allow you to enter other areas of the world, if your level is high enough.

Though the game doesn't currently support the ability to directly battle your friends, developer Gravity Bear says that will be coming soon along with additional items and upgrades.

Facebook Forecast: Will Anyone Play?
It's likely the game will gain players thanks to its pretty graphics. The simple gameplay also makes it accessible to a very wide audience. Whether the game will have enough depth to keep players coming back will remain to be seen as new features are added.