Game Play: Penny Arcade Adventures, Episode 1

I feel like a dissenter in a sea of fans, but I'm not coming down on a terribly positive side for this game. I'll probably poke at it some more this week, but it is in danger of being shelved after just a few hours of play.

The humor is of course, present - these are funny guys after all. Hothead has done a good job of translating the 2D style of their comic into a 3D world as well. This isn't some cheap rollout to cash in on Penny Arcade's considerable fame.

That said, there are several nuisances which add up quickly. There's little stuff, like "New Game" consistently being the default even after you've played a few times. More annoying is the sketchy method of running into objects to interact with them, which comprises a decent amount of the gameplay and yet you'll find yourself dancing around objects routinely. It's not super annoying, not a crime against nature or anything - but when it happens over and over again, and your reward is just some pithy description of a tack ... it wears a little thin.

Combat is what's really killing me. True confession, I've never been a big Final Fantasy fan, but I don't think that's the fault here. There's something about the interface which is just more work than play. You're watching the status of your action buttons to see when you can attack, but you're also supposed to be watching your opponents to see if you're supposed to be blocking since the game falls prey to the "turn based isn't good enough" philosophy of role-playing and everything occurs in quasi-real time. So while I'm squinting at Tycho's inventory to see if I have any bandages left, I'm trying to block with another and ... damn, I think I might have just healed an enemy. It's like a combat system for people with ADD. The best part of the combat, using minigames for powered up attacks, is reserved for those patient enough to wait to be beat on for it to be available, generally only to fail and get partial damage on it anyway. Not really a reward worth the effort.

And speaking of enemies, I might not have anything against mimes and robots in general - but I don't exactly get why I walked right over a pair of robots when I was by myself with a rake, but three of them wiped out my entire party in a heartbeat last night. The production values are fine - but, seriously ... enough with the damn robots. If you're going to throw two enemies at me of clearly differing difficulty - throw two enemies of me that look like they're clearly different. After the like tenth robot battle, it's one thing to be a little dull - but why be confusing too?

Part of me wants to like this game for its humor and charm. For a moment there, I was reminded of Anachronox , but no longer. And I can get the humor and charm for free from the web comic without having to bump around a suitcase so that I can open it and get killed by a lousy interface and a couple of robots.

Penny Arcade Accidentally Mails Off (And Recovers) Carmack DS

Damn.

We didn't even open the DS that Electronic Arts sent. If we had, we would have seen that it was being offered up an an auction for Child's Play. It was, in fact, a Nintendo DS signed by John Carmack. As I said, we didn't even open the thing. If you have been doing this for almost a decade, as we have, you develop a very comprehensive and far reaching cynicism that applies to anything that a company sends you. We arm ourselves in this way because we think it will make us deliver you a more robust assessment of the medium. Also, we are assholes. Professionally.

What I am trying to say is that we fucked up bad. Bad. We actually sent that DS away as a prize in Gabriel's revolting cookie contest this morning, and pawing through the entrails of the box we found an absolutely genuine letter of support for both the site and for the mission of the charity. There is a portion of the letter dedicated to his pride in the game's custom wand-shaped stylus, and if you take pride in custom wand-styluses what that says to me is that you are a huge nerd. This was not some vile and crass manipulator. He wasn't trying to fly me out to gay Paris. He used his position to secure something incredible for the charity, and believed that I would be literate enough to read the enclosed letter. He was wrong.

-- Penny Arcade -- Not That We Mind

What's even more fubar is that accompanying comic mocks EA for sending it in the first place. I make a humble promise to John Carmack that should he sign a DS and send it to me, I would not mail to anyone ... ever. Even for charity, actually. Probably wouldn't even open the thing, just bronze it and hang it on the wall with a small plaque explaining why I can now die happy.

Update:

We were able to fish the signed DS out of the UPS bin in advance of the pickup, so that tender collectible will go up in an eBay auction on Wednesday - acting as a coda to this year's Child's Play. It's been replaced by a common, absolutely ordinary Nintendo DS, which isn't as cool, but what do you do? Hopefully their naughty cookies will be a comfort to them in this dark time.