Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Review Of Darkness, Episode 1 - 9/10
By Justin Murray
N.B. This review is based off the PC version of the game. The game will be coming to the PSN sometime in the future
For those of you who don’t regularly read or have never read the Penny Arcade web comics. It may come as a bit of a surprise to see that that it has been turned in to an episodic series of games. But the often critical Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik Of Penny Arcade (PA) have teamed up with HotHead Games to bring the PA brand to into the medium that it so often uses as inspiration.
Tyco shoots while Gabe bashes
Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Episode 1 (PAA, E1) is a adventure game RPG hybrid. With adventure game style puzzles and dialog punctuated with JRPG inspired battles. The game starts with you deigning your character, witch is then used through out the game. Your created 3-D character is then transformed into a penny arcade style portrait, during the games animated comic book cut scenes.
Anne Claire's flame thrower comes in very handy
The game opens with the destruction of your house via the foot of a giant robot. You then set after the robot which leads you to meet up with Gabe and Tyco from the Penny Arcade comic strips. They are currently heading up a paranormal detective agency and agree to help you with finding the mysterious giant robot.
House VS Giant Robot, house dosnt come off so well
The game plays like a typical adventure game with various comedic characters to talk to and puzzles to solve. What separates PAA apart from most adventure games is the JRPG style battle system. When you encounter one of the many violent hobos, fruit fornicating robots or homicidal mimes you will be taken into a turn based RPG battle. You have 3 types of actions to perform, using items, regular attacks and special attacks and they cool down in that order. This allows you to either use a item quickly or bide your time until you can unleash your devastating special attacks on your enemies. Either by defeating enemies and gaining experience or by upgrading your weapons you get more powerful over the course of the game.
The character creation screen
The RPG elements work well to give the game more depth than a straight up adventure game. Which is good, as the rest of the game can become a bit monotonous. With only 3 environments to visit in the game, you will be constantly retreating over the same ground to complete your objectives. This however is counter-balanced by the constantly witty dialog, which is exchanged between the various characters through out the game. Fans of the PA comic strips will be very happy with the dialog in the game. The Music throughout the game is adequately placed except for the horrid rap tune that plays over the end credits, that makes Call Of Duty 4’s credits rap look good.
Its ok I got him
So overall the first episode of Penny Arcade Adventures is a good start to the series. It provides a solid 8 or so hours of gameplay. With a some witty dialog and a good battle system thrown in. I would highly recommend that every one check this title out.
Gamplay: 9/ 10
Visuals 8/ 10
Audio: 7/ 10
Value: 9/ 10
Recommend: YES
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