The Thrill of the Fight - major update and on sale
In my deeply considered opinion, there is no better deal that a late-stage Early Access title in Steam. Sure, there may still be a few features to add and bugs to squash, but the game has pretty much been developed to its final state.
As an example, The Thrill of the Fight, an amazingly good VR boxer, has released a major update that merges the beta branch into the main, soon-to-be-released branch. Already a bargain at $9.99, it is also now on sale for $7.99 on Steam. Thrill of the Fight is, by far, one of my favorite VR games, along with being pretty much the only cardio workout I need. A three-round fight has me huffing & puffing for a good half hour after the final bell has rung. Besides the non-traditional health benefits, it is actually great fun!
The Thrill of the Fight is available in the Steam Store here. The $7.99 price is good through April 23rd.
The full list of what has been merged into the main version:
New Models
Ugly Joe, the trainer, and the referee have been updated with new models! Dashing David's model was updated in a previous patch and his name was changed to Gene Priest. At this point, all of the existing models have been updated, which means it's time to bring in some new boxers!
There is now a speed bag in the gym! Currently it's optimized for triplet bounce hits. Give it a go and see what rate of hits per minute you can sustain.
There are now visible timers in the gym and arena that keep track of the time remaining in the current break or round.
In previous versions, creating a "whipping" motion with your arm would generate an insanely high speed punch that would do massive damage, making all of your other punches pointless. This update include an update to the auto-calibrator that detects these arm whips and brings them in-line with your other punches without unfairly penalizing you for legitimate swings.
If you have turned off auto-calibration, the game will try to adjust for arm whip punches by reducing your punch mass appropriately. If you haven't tried out the auto-calibrator in awhile, please give it another chance. It has received many updates and does a great job of handling some of the inaccuracies from trying to read what your body is doing in the virtual world.
The punch animations have been updated to reduce the frequency of opponents leaning out of the path of your swings. Lunge punches now behave better if the opponent tries to step too close to you.
The AI's distance keeping and aggression algorithms have received major tweaks, as have their blocking capabilities. Your fist now fits into openings in the opponents guard better than it used to. The damage system has been tweaked in many different ways.
There have been a ton of performance and visual polish changes as well. You can get more specific details by checking out the change logs that have been posted for the beta branch over the last few months.
Here's what's new since the last beta:
- New referee model!
- You can now set yourself to turn around backwards in match.
- The AI's jabs have had their speed reduced slightly.
- Timer visuals have been tweaked.
- Some tweaks to damage modifier values.
- Increased chance of bleeding by 50%.
- Attempted to address an issue where the AI jumping between animations would cause cause an unreasonably large amount of velocity to be added to your punch force.
