Maki: Paw of Fury (Switch) Review

Published by RedDeer.Games, Maki Paw of Fury is a nostalgic tribute to retro beat’em ups. Covered in beautifully fluid pixel art, this brawler is unfortunately a one note lesson in repetition.

Playing as a warrior fox, a friend gets kidnapped and it is your job to save her from the throngs of anthropomorphic bad guys. And by throngs of bad guys I mean literally 100s of the same enemy type that take way too many hits to defeat. If I had to teach game design to a class full of students, I would use this brawler as the quintessential example of how boredom quickly sets in without variety. This game is nothing more than walk forward and punch a bear/snake in the face.

In comparison, a game like Final Fight, an arcade release of the early 90s, had the player progressing by punching anything that moved. However, although enemies repeat, each character has different behaviors, names, health bars, and movesets. Further, bosses were challenging and the player can make use of weapons along the way. Maki does none of this. By the end of the first stage, you will have punch-punch-punched one-button combo’d your way through a hundred of the same upright walking bear without variety. Making matters worse, enemies don’t really attack. They just stand there, waiting to be smacked in the dome. The only time the player can get damaged is if the screen is littered with a dozen of the same enemies at once. Increasing the amount of enemies isn’t a substitution for variety.

The control scheme also doesn’t make sense. Two buttons attack but only the YYY button combo is needed as the B button’s attack is slower but not as powerful. The A button is assigned to the jump action but is awful and never feels right. The X button is the special attack but can only be used when the special meter is full. But stupidly, the game wants you to hit the A+Y button to perform a special attack, a button combo that has never been used in any other game because no one’s thumb can do this. There are no stats to increase, no skills to unlock, no weapons to use, no money to spend, and there is no need to use any other button except for Y. The snake enemy is also highly annoying as they always retreat into the ground when they have one hit left, forcing the player to wait to kill them. Plus, why are there so many snakes in the frozen landscape level?

Even the stage design is questionable at best. There will be times when there will be no health restoring items for a long stretch, then the player will be given two back-to-back. Stages also drag due to the extreme repetition, making them seem longer than they really are. At the conclusion of each stage, the player will receive a summary of their performance and literally hundreds of the same enemies will be punched to death by the end of each. The only variation comes in the form of poorly constructed chase scenes that serve no purpose and would have been better with them eliminated. Oh yeah, and there are no checkpoints, forcing player to replay the horrendously boring stage all over again upon quitting.

The only positive aspect comes from the visually pleasing pixel art. So it breaks my heart for a game that looks this good to feel so unfinished. The backgrounds also loop so even the positive aspect isn’t that positive. 

Maki: Paw of Fury is nothing more than a one note undercooked brawler. The player will see everything is game has to offer within the first five minutes of gameplay. By the time the credits rolled, my hand literally hurt from mashing the Y button to the point of almost breaking my Pro Controller. Maki might look appealing from the wholesome art style but there is almost no game in this game.

Not As Good As: literally any other brawler

Better Than: console ports of the Swords and Bones titles

Wait For It: the alleged Golden Ax reboot Sega promised

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

X/Twitter: @ZackGaz

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