Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Windows
Graphics Score: 9
Sound Score: 8
Control Score: 8
Story Score: 7
Fun Score: 9
Replay Score: 6
Overall Score
78%
May 31, 2008 - 2:56 pm
Today I bought the first Penny Arcade Adventure: On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness, and I have to say I'm impressed. Now I'm not an RPG fan, Golden Sun drove me nuts and Final Fantasy bored the crap out of me, but this changed when I bought this game.
Most of you are acquainted with Gabe and Tycho, the hard-swearing characters of the Penny Arcade web comic, and fans will be delighted to know that they appear faithful to their static origins. Plenty of quirky humor, political incorrectness and hilarious characters and dialogue (written by Gabe & Tycho no less) make this almost an interactive version of the comic. Oh yes, and profanity. It may look cartoony, but you would definitely not want to show this to your kids.
The game starts out with a bang, a stomp and and the unknown character you play is introduced to the two heroes of the webcomic. Battling an army of "Fruit Fuckers", Mimes, the Homeless and more armed with your rake, Gabe's fists, and Tycho's Tommy gun, you battle your way through the games often abstract storyline.
It's a by the numbers RPG (quite literally, tabletop fans will be delighted to know there is even a "roll for initiative" feature at the start of battles) and the whole game is somewhat curiously an RPG spoof of the RPG genre. Not turn based, your attacks charge up and with each level brings new specials to use on your foes. There are support characters ranging from the local stray cat to Tycho's genius daughter, and you can upgrade and level up your main attacks, the standard RPG fare.
The graphics are impressive for an indie game, and still looks fantastic on a widescreen high resolution screen, something I found others (Lookin' at you Sam & Max) lack. The cartoony cell shaded world is high res enough to be pretty, and still cartoony enough to stay true to it's comic origins. The dialouge is told through interactive comic panels, much like Max Payne, and have multiple dialogue choices. The attack animations are hilarious too, and very smooth.
The sound is great, with the score perfectly complimenting the game's old-fashioned feel, the only bone to pick here is possibly the lack of audio dialouge, beyond the "disembodied voice" (his words) of the Narrator.
Story wise, it's no Shakespeare, but it will still keep you entertained and it's isn't really central to this game.
This game is enormously fun to play, its easy to pick up and will keep you glued to the screen for it's duration. I highly recommend fans of indie games, RPGs or the webcomic to give the demo a try and at 20 bucks and 200mb download (You just unlock the demo with a code), it's a steal.
I really liked this game. As someone who actually reads the blog posts along with the comics, I've really come to enjoy their brand of humor.
I actually like the fact that there was no voice acting. They do a lot to give you a sense for how something's said based on facial expressions and fonts. But most importantly, it didn't ruin things like Ctrl+Alt+Del did when they had voices in their recent animated series. Sometimes you have your own voice for a character and hearing another just kind of throws you off.
Prior to purchase I did think the $20 might be a bit much but I put it down as a vote of confidence on future episodes (and as a thanks for years of laughs). After playing the game though, I definitely didn't regret the money spent, which is more than I can say for a lot of games I've gotten recently.
Comments
ʊIrishancest
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ӝspot
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ɤKevlar
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I actually like the fact that there was no voice acting. They do a lot to give you a sense for how something's said based on facial expressions and fonts. But most importantly, it didn't ruin things like Ctrl+Alt+Del did when they had voices in their recent animated series. Sometimes you have your own voice for a character and hearing another just kind of throws you off.
Prior to purchase I did think the $20 might be a bit much but I put it down as a vote of confidence on future episodes (and as a thanks for years of laughs). After playing the game though, I definitely didn't regret the money spent, which is more than I can say for a lot of games I've gotten recently.
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
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ѻzionwingmaster
VP of Crosseye Comics
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VP of Crosseye Comics.
ѻmick-mick
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Thanks for the tip.
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