Bif! Baf! Bof! Claws Of Furry starts brawling today
Fiiight!
The beat 'em up is one of the few genres still carrying a torch for punxploitation, still sending us to punch through 80s American anxieties about the moral decline of cities and their corrupting influence, still kicking through seedy streets and biffing baddies who wear weird shades and bristle with studs and mohawks. I dig it. Claws Of Furry, released this morning, is a side-scrolling beat 'em up with a bit of a Ninja Turtles take on mohawked menaces, starring ninja cats kicking the heck out of ruffians and riot cops alike. I've not time to play today (I am finishing this post on a train) but I'm a sucker for the theme so here's me making a note to check back.
So! Because reasons, ninja cats are walking to right through a night city, duffing up punks and dog cops and and crocodiles wearing Crocs and other oddities. It's beat 'em up, y'see. It does support cooperative local multiplayer for up to four cats.
Along with your typical 'duff everything up' campaign, Claws Of Furry has a wave survival arena mode and, for the toughest of kittens, a campaign mode where dying makes you start the whole level over (no thanks!). And costumes inspired by superheroes and whatnot give different bonuses. But mostly walking to the right and punching.
I'm fine with that, in theory at least. I rarely replay beat 'em ups but I do enjoy their journeys, especially if they're through the streets of moral panic.
Claws Of Furry is out now on Steam. A 10% launch-week discount brings it down to £6.47/€8.99/$8.99.
I adore movie punks (and punks in 'very special episodes' of TV shows). America stands on razing the planet with nuclear fire and the mainstream is concerned that these damn 'punkers' show no respect for traditional values. They're sex and drugs and spitting and disrespect and casual violence - not the good kind of formal, systemic, imperial violence. Movie punks were cast as nihilism incarnate and the end of civilisation by a culture prepared to murder five billion people in the name of protecting wholesome values. Amazing. And all that's distilled into elaborate eyeliner and colourful hair. Love it. And then the music these damn punkers are so often listening to is, like, hair metal. Double love it.
Ah go on, meet some of that lively lot in this compilation video from Everything Is Terrible, one of a series made to celebrate the launch of the remarkable book Destroy All Movies!!!