CerebralDebris

The Short Version

• Platform: Xbox 360
• One Word: Entertaining
• Two Words: Budget Quality
• Worth It: Yes
• Scale: terrible | poor | fair | good | great

The Long Version

“You’re collecting hobo meat?”

“Yeh. You know … from hobos.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“… they attacked me first!”

She glanced at the screen again, then turned to the kitten sitting beside her and said, “I don’t think I approve of this game.” With that, she went back to her book.

There were two realizations I had to come to in order to begin really enjoying the first episode of “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness,” the series of budget titles being created by the folks at Penny Arcade and Hothead Games.  First, as was pointed out to me by a few friends when I bitched about how hard the combat was: you can’t hoard items. You have to actually use them, if you want to win. Second: it’s ok to use items because every time you switch screens, all of the stuff you’ve bashed with your rake in order to obtain these items respawns. So if you’re running low on Weak Sauce, it’s really no big deal … go beat up a few trash cans in an area you’ve alread cleared of enemies, and you’ll stock back up. Since coming to understand these things, my enjoyment of the game has picked up substantially.

I am now happily leading my merry band (consisting of Gabe, Tycho, and my ridiculous orange-haired irishman with the outrageous mustache and the green clothes) around. We’re beating the crap out of Fruit Fuckers, Mimes, Clowns, and yes … Hobos … using rakes, fists, and a tommy gun with a gigantic flashing diode on its muzzle. Periodically we enlist the help of a young girl with a devastating flame thrower attack, a little pink robo-juicer, or a cat whose disturbing method of attack causes enemies to recoil in horror (though it doesn’t deal out much damage). There is a lot of profanity. There are a lot of jokes about pee. There is an obsession with Lovecraftian elder gods.

This is a Penny Arcade game, for sure.

If you’re not familiar with the venerable gaming comic, your probably not a gamer. If you are familiar with it, but don’t like it … this game’s not going to work for you either. The entire game is scripted by Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, the same dude who writes all of the comics, and most of the dialog and story is delivered in comic form (occassionally animated, but often simply still panels with word balloons). Though set in the 1920′s city of New Arcadia, the dialog and character responses are decidedly modern … and usually pretty funny.

I’ve been a PA fan since they started at Loonygames (an online magazine for which I also wrote, back in the day), and I was curious to see how they would do in their first entry into the industry they have gently and not-so-gently mocked for the past decade (roughly). They’ve stayed basic, which I think is a good idea — the title is not too ambitious in its controls, its locations, its dialog trees, or its bells and whistles. They do a small set of things well, instead of overreaching like a lot of small companies and instead doing tons of stuff poorly. Of the two, I’ll take the former every time.

So you get some initially overwhelming but quickly-mastered, Final-Fantasy-ish combat where everyone – friends and foes – has a certain amount of “wind-up time” before their next attack. You get the ability to block incoming attacks, which takes some practice but is highly rewarding when you do it perfectly, and your guy takes zero damage AND gets a free counter-attack. You get four separate areas, all of them beautifully designed. You get tons of Gabe’s fantastic cartoon artwork. You get lots of Jerry’s amusing dialog. For a while you get an awesome narrator, but then he goes silent for the rest of the game (more’s the pity).

You do also get some tedium, I’ll admit. The game mechanic is mostly “talk to some guy, kill some stuff, return to guy and get next part of story … repeat” and it’s best in small doses. I don’t think I’ve played for more than 90 minutes at a time, at any point in the game, but since you can save anywhere you want, this really isn’t a problem. Play until you get bored, hit save, move on to some other game or some new activity.

So what’s the final judgement? If you’re a fan of Penny Arcade, then dropping twenty bucks on this is a no brainer. If you’re specifically NOT a fan … avoid this game like the plague. If you don’t know for sure, try the demo, as it gives a very representative slice of gameplay and story.