Two Hereos, Two Review Views – Read both
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2
by Lame360Gamer
©2008 Warren Marshall:
You would be forgiven for calling Penny Arcade Adventures
a modern day Monkey Island.
This being the second in their graphical adventures which takes your own created hero and has them team up with both Gabe and Tycho after your half rebuilt home is destroyed (again!) by the duo.
Soon you join their Startling Developments Detective Agency on yet another adventure to learn the secrets of New Arcadia, solving smaller cases for the townsfolk to uncover a deeper and darker secret. Like the first in the series, the game has managed to capture the fun and adventure of these classic games and also tried to introduce other mechanics along the way to modernise and give the series its own style of play. The puzzles are there, the humorous storyline and comic style graphics are all present.
• Penny Arcade Gameplay Footage
In theory it all sounds good if you can manage to pull it off. Penny Arcade comes close to the achievement but falls just short on the mark. There is no denying that Hothead have created a very solid adventure series with plenty of room to grow in future installments but how much further can you take it before it is so much of the same?
The graphics are a perfect blend of your classic 2D comic mixed with 3D gameplay. The transitions between panels (when jumping from screen to screen) works well and the only time it really takes you out of the game is when having to load between various levels (which happens a lot!).
The humorous narration, classic Penny artwork and dialogue make you feel like you are taking part in an interactive comic book. Besides the occasional frame rate hiccup, in short it works well. It is simple, effective and most of all it fits the style of game perfectly.
Gameplay however to me was a love/hate kind of relationship. As much as I enjoy a good jrpg, it seems out of place and battles in real time would have kept the pace going rather than bring it to a grinding halt. To make matters worse I found that having to trigger the blocking system at the right time, while waiting for your next characters action turn and sifting through your inventory all at the same time became more of a micro-management mini game rather than a battle.
There are special attacks, but this then also introduces varying button combination mini-games to master.
While they try to connect a true rpg with an adventure game the two do struggle to find the synergy required to feel complete.
The older adventure games relied more on the player being able to resolve conflicts by the puzzles themselves as opposed to levelling the characters which I found left the puzzles in this game nothing but a means to move to the next scene.
The audio is done well with some very funny narration and character voices adding to the 1920′s feel to the world and there isn’t a lot to find faults with. Sure some of the voices can become repetitive but this is a small game. You backtrack a lot to revisit characters and locations during your journey so it is expected that a thousand hours of audio wont be found.
Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is a solid game. If you haven’t played the first in the series you can pick this game straight up and dive right in, only missing a couple of the characters and in-jokes however they have made this game stand on its own also as an individual title.
It will take the player sometime to complete everything the game has to offer and collect all the hidden items however like most games of this genre once the puzzles are solved, to replay through the story would be a breeze (thankfully there are varying levels of difficulty). It has kept me interested enough to persist through wanting to beat frustrating puzzles and clunky fight sequences to see the story develop.
If you are a fan of Penny Arcade or just a fan of the old action adventure genre the game is worth a look. The story will keep you going until all the cases are solved and is a great time-waster game. In small doses it will keep the player occupied for many hours. Being able to deliver a solid, entertaining story the way Penny Arcade Adventures has done makes all the small faults forgivable.
“7.5/10
©2008 Warren Marshall:
• Review # 2
A great distraction if you’re not in the
mood to play the big releases
©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:
By now everyone knows of Penny Arcade and their quirky yet funny take on the gaming industry and all the happenings in it. Well it seems that the Penny Arcade team decided to partner up with Hothead games to create an XBLA game based around Tycho and Gabe the 2 main characters of Penny Arcade.
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2, is of course the 2nd episode which starts several months after the original adventure. Now having not played the first episode I was somewhat hesitant as to what I would have to endure.
First I select my character from a few different pieces of costumes where the different combination make for some funny faces, clothing and hair do’s. My house gets destroyed and a rake that is the best robot smashing weapon you can find made me amused, intrigued and attentive.
It mixes RPG turn based combat, with a storyline that holds humour in it’s midst. Only 5-7 hours long it features the great humour from the comic strips, it features some interesting item names and some fun turn based combat. Leveling up is automatic so you never have to sit there and go ” ok, power up 1 or 2 hmm…?”
It doesn’t feature the best graphics, but it does the job quite fine, and dialogue is done great. When entering a cutscene the bottom of the screen flies up and shows the cartoon version of the in game characters and then the conversation is off.
There is an emphasis on exploration in this game as some missions require you to explore the various levels in search of certain items which is great and adds some more value to the game. This does also create repetitiveness throughout the game and does get annoying after a while.
1200 MSP is a bit hefty, but if you love the comic strips then this XBLA game is for you, plus it’s only 232mb as well pretty small for such a great package. One thing though that grinds my gears is the slow movement in this game makes it seem like you are running in slow-mo.
Other than that the game is a great distraction if you’re not in the mood to play the big releases that have come out in the past month.
“8/10
GrathiusXR
©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:
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