Knuckle Pine Dash review

Knuckle Pine Dash
Price (as of early 2010): $12.66

Amazingly, the basic premise between Knuckle Pine and Knuckle Pine Dash is the same: Get in the ring with Pine, and if you beat her, you get to put your thingie in her you know what. If you lose, you get laughed at in a Duck Hunt-esque manner and you have to go home to, I guess, pleasure yourself, or maybe sleep with your wife. Unless she was watching the match and won't sleep with you either. Ladies like a winner. Unless this is H/C fic.

Man, I'm way off topic already. So the basic objective is the same, but some of the details have changed. Instead of just boxing until one of you is knocked out, you now go three rounds with Pine, and whoever has more health left at the end is victorious. (I'd really like to know who's judging these matches, by the way.) In the case of a tie, Pine is awarded the bout. I personally find this to be a little weird; The first game, I thought, had kind of a underground boxing type of feel, where two combatants get in the ring, Pine putting her body on the line, and you putting, uh, I guess your pride, or maybe your face if you get beaten up. Having three rounds - and judges; that sill blows my mind - kinda dilutes this whole atmosphere a little bit. I mean, there isn't even an audience, as far as I can see; Maybe in the first game you and Pine just met in a boxing ring to settle your differences. But what's happening now? All right, I'll tell you, what's happening now is that I'm thinking about this way too much. Oh, and uh, also, between rounds, both of you can get your health back (by picking random cards, same interface as how you box.)

In addition, Pine has been hitting the gym in between games; While she's something of a puss in the original game, she's now quite a tough cookie, and you'll probably win as often as you lose. Both of you now have super punches (marked as a V on the cards). If you draw a V and she doesn't, she gets pounded. If she draws a V and you don't, she knocks your punches out of the way and throws a punch in your face. If you both draw a V, you both go crazy punching each other.
Lastly, you can remove both Pine's top and bottom by clicking in between her boobs and just above her panties, respectively, although removing each piece will make you take as much damage as a super punch as Pine is scandalized by your ungentlemanly behaviour.

Now this all sounds good, but I don't think the three round match length really works to the game's advantage. In the original game, it's easy to forgive the fact that there's no skill involved and you're just picking numbers because the match is over so fast. It's harder to ignore this during a three-round slugfest. It can become particuarlly annoying if you find that you're losing the match, or if you want a specific outcome like winning on points; There's no way to take it easy on Pine, and there's no way to do better, just keep picking numbers. To this day I've still never won on points because you can't run the clock out. The only thing you can do to actually effect the match is to deliberately click Pine's clothes off, which is dangerous since she gets a free super punch.

Other than that there's the H-mode; I think you can do more things than just zoom zoom in her boom boom, but I'll be fucked if I can figure out how. There's also endless boxing mode.

If it seems like I complained a lot, well, I did. Maybe these are all minor complaints, but since (spoiler alert) they're fixed in 3, I'd have to recommend you either pick up the original and save $4 or get a paper route to afford the extra $6 you'd have to pay to get the third game.

Recommended? Gosh, don't you read? I humbly recommend you pick up 1 or 3, kid.