Title: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One
Platform: PC/Xbox Live Arcade
Developer: Hothead Games
Publisher: Hothead Games
MSRP: $19.95 (via
Greenhouse)/1600 Microsoft Points (XBLA)
Editor: Loren '
AgtFox' Halek
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One Review
Penny Arcade’s first episode of their entrance into the videogaming world has finally come out! Now Tycho and Gabe (Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik) can face all the developers and reviewers out there that they have torn apart on their own site for making bad games and writing bad reviews. So, with that bit of enticement out of the way, I’m here to tell you that if you’re a fan of the webcomic, as I have been since almost the start of it, you should enjoy your roughly 6 hours with
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One (last time I’ll type that out until the end of the review…whew!). For those who have not read the webcomic, all I can say is good luck getting all the in-jokes and be prepared for a lot of swear words to be thrown about along with blood spewing and robots pissing(?). This is not a game to play with your children in the room, that’s for sure!
This first of an unknown number of episodes opens up with you choosing your character.
You can change different body parts and even name him (or her) however you want or you can stick with the default name of…Carl. Yeah, not too exciting, is it? With that out of the way, the game opens up in the fictional town of New Arcadia in the year 1922. You hear the voice of an unknown narrator setting up the story who even says you shouldn’t dwell on trying to figure out who he is. Soon enough you are told by the narrator to rake your leaves and as you do so you see above your house a huge Fruit Fucker, a PA webcomic fan favorite, whose foot totally destroys your house. Left shocked by what just happened, you notice two men racing after the robot and you decide to take up your rake and follow them. This is the beginning of your adventure adventure.
You soon meet up with Gabe and Tycho from the Penny Arcade webcomic and they become your team for the rest of the game. Gabe fights with his fists and Tycho fights by flinging the book he is reading away and firing a tommy gun. Along the way you will also pick up extra characters (like Anne-Claire, or Anarchy, and a female version of the Fruit Fucker) that can be used at whatever point as long as their time attack is filled. There are plenty of pop culture references even though this game is set in the 1920s and it is obvious that Jerry (Tycho) has written the story with a H.P. Lovecraft and Dungeons and Dragons feel to it. Not surprising that he chose those two subjects because they are so near and dear to his heart. There are also plenty of Penny Arcade references in the game and honestly people that don’t know about the comic are going to feel pretty lost.
The game itself is kind of a cross between old-school
Final Fantasy (timed attacks) on the gameplay side and a
Freedom Force feel on the graphics side.
The game is also interspersed with Flash animated cutscenes that are well done, as well as Flash animated dialog at the bottom of the screen where you choose things to say like you did in old adventure games. The game itself is easily controlled with the mouse. You click where you want to go and you click which attack you want to do at the bottom of the screen for each character and then you click on an enemy to attack. It is all pretty easy and my time with the 360 demo showed that the controls there are also quite easy.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself during my time with the game, having a lot of good laughs while going along. If there were any minuses to be extracted from this game, I can only think of a couple. The first problem is that the game is rather short and the majority of the time is taken up reading instead of having voiceovers for instance. Most of your gameplay time is spent cracking open various items like boxes in order to receive the copious amounts of items that this game loves to throw at you. You can choose to take up battles or not, the enemies are on the screen and can be avoided if you want. The only necessary ones are contained within missions, although you also want as many robot parts as possible to upgrade the character’s weapons via Anne-Claire. The cool part is you eventually end up with a kick-ass rake at the end if you get enough robot parts to upgrade it..
The second problem is that the game is pretty easy.
Some of the bosses will give you trouble, but once you figure out their weaknesses they are taken care of quite easily, even if they have a ton of hit points. It’s hard to say this is a bad thing though, but in some ways it may be a reflection of what the PA gang and/or Hothead think their major demographic is. If they think it is the younger crowd then they’ve effectively eliminated it since this is an M rated game full of blood, swearing and downright twisted stuff. If it is the older crowd I think they’ve made this game a bit too easy for its own good, something that can hopefully be rectified with the next episode. Then again maybe the whole idea is to not make the game too difficult and make it enjoyable instead.
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One is an excellent opening for Penny Arcade’s entrance into the very thing they talk about everyday: videogaming. I always believed that Mike and Jerry (sorry, I like to use their real names versus their aliases) were going to make a good game ever since they announced their plans for this. For two people that rip apart developers and reviewers so much they had to come out with at least a competent game or they’d look like fools. Depending on how many episodes there are, it could become quite expensive at $20 a shot, but this first episode contains enough (along with a preview of the next episode) to keep me coming back for at least the second episode. Long live Penny Arcade!
The Good- The characters have the feel of Mike Krahulik (Gabe)’s drawing style down pat
- The Gabe and Tycho characters are spot on, even when moved to the 1920s
- Characters from the webcomic making an appearance, sometimes in major roles
- The jokes are fantastic, but if you haven’t read PA before you’ll be lost
- The story is well done…who else can combine Fruit Fuckers, mimes, Cthulu and a Urine Professor?
The Bad- The game is short on gameplay
- It is a bit too easy
- A bit of reading
- If you’ve never read PA you won’t get many jokes
The Ugly- So many situations in this game are crazy, so little time to explain them…
*Note - This review is based on the PC version of the game. I only played the demo of the 360 version. When you buy the PC game you are also allowed to play it on Macs and the Linux operating system
