We punch stuff with a real life Dawn of War 3 Power Fist
Stop. Warhammer time.
Video game preview events are curious things. Event organisers have a brief window in which to get the essence of a game across to journalists, often accompanied by a laundry list of things they aren't allowed to show or mention. Most often this is a simple case of putting people in a room with a preview build on PC or console. Sometimes, it involves strapping people into a full body rig and getting them to smash things with a pneumatic Power Fist.
That's exactly what happened when I went to take a look at Dawn of War 3's real-life Power Fist with Aoife "Punching sh*t? SIGN ME UP" Wilson.
The Power Fist, made by a production company called Rewind, weighs over 10 kilos, necessitating a special harness to help us wield it effectively. It's not just a big metal glove either, the aluminium digits shoot out from the fist at the pull of a trigger, powered by an industrial pneumatic cylinder which delivers up to 3000 PSI. Which, in layman's terms, means it punches HARD.
Allegedly the weapon is powerful enough to punch through an actual brick wall, but unfortunately health and safety concerns meant we couldn't test this ourselves. Instead we had to direct our fists of fury towards smaller items that were less likely to crush us to death, such as crockery and pretty little fairy castles.
Luckily, thanks to the gratuitous use of slo-mo, punching through these less imposing objects still looks pretty cool, as you can see for yourself in the video below.
So the question is, if you had a real life Power Fist in your possession, what would you punch with it? And you can't choose Chris Bratt, I've already bagsied him.