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Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One Review for PC

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One Review for PC

Destroyers of Gods

Penny Arcade has long been a bastion of gaming and geek culture. As the popular online comic approaches its 10th year in existence, it seems almost natural to find its creators branching off from merely satirizing video games with their particularly pointed brand of wit to create one of their own. After all, they’ve dabbled with bound volumes, spawned a gaming-related kids’ charity, and put together an extremely successful annual gaming expo. Partnering with developers Hothead Games, Penny Arcade co-conspirators Jerry “Tycho” Holkins and Mike “Gabe” Krahulik have produced a work of gaming art that will ultimately strike the right chord with their fanbase.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One screenshot

Despite its verbose title, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is a relatively short premier episode in what is shaping up to be an excellent four-part series. The game is loosely based on the online comic, but it strays from many of the usual shenanigans found on the site and moves into more epic storytelling turf. Of course, you’ll still find plenty of references to wangs, perverted robot fruit juicers, and other running gags from the strip sprinkled liberally throughout the game. Episode One is structured to let new players jump in with nominal effort and enjoy the adventure, yet long-time Penny Arcade fans will pick up many subtle nuances and undoubtedly find additional humor in seeing how the elements and characters from the strip tie-in to the game in weird ways.

Set in the 1920s steam punk inspired town of New Arcadia, Penny Arcade Adventures features a hilarious and well-written story penned by Holkins. As the game opens, your custom-designed character is raking leaves when a giant robot – affectionately known to Penny Arcade fans as the Fruit F*cker – crushes your home and storms off into the distance with Gabe and Tycho in hot pursuit. While searching for revenge and a new home, you’ll join the duo in an uproarious adventure packed with urinating hobos, golden mullets, satanic mimes, and a veritable cornucopia of other bizarre and often disturbing elements. Holkins manages to cram a surprising amount of crazy twists into the five-to-eight hours it will take players to wade through the first episode.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One screenshot

The visual style of the game is equally impressive. It essentially plays like an interactive comic book, and the epic (wang) err…vibe of the story carries over with the art direction impeccably. For the most part, Krahulik’s top-notch artistry translates incredibly well into video game form with backgrounds, cutscenes, and comic stills during dialogue. The character models found in the actual gameplay are the weakest area in the graphical department, but they’re not outright bad. It’s hard to imagine anyone who thoroughly enjoys the comic not loving the general look and feel of Episode One; it’s right on the money. Being able to custom design your own character and then watch them animate in the gameplay and comic scenes is also pretty awesome.

As those familiar with the duo’s work might expect, the art and writing for the game is a superior package. Interestingly, the gameplay falls somewhere between point-and-click adventure and the classic real-time RPG combat found in early Final Fantasy games. It’s not a perfect mix. Using the mouse to move around and check out the environments works great (and yields a lot of humorous little tidbits, depending on what you click on). You’ll come across a few interesting puzzles and a fetch quest or two, but far more of your time will inevitably be occupied in combat – a somewhat chaotic and occasionally frustrating experience. Kicking it old-school, everyone will roll for initiative to see who goes first. Then each individual character’s meters will slowly build, allowing them to use items, attack, or execute special attacks, depending on how long they wait. This requires clicking once on the specific attack button and then again on its intended target. Meanwhile, enemies will be attacking, and you’ll have an opportunity to block their varied assaults using well-timed jabs to the spacebar. All of this happens in real-time, so things can quickly become hectic until you can get accustomed to the chaos.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One screenshot

A few other layers of complexity are thrown in for good measure. Initiating special attacks triggers a mini-game unique to each character which determines how effective their attack is. These special maneuvers are a pain to pull off – particularly Gabe’s, which requires some hardcore hammering of the space bar followed by a precisely timed gentle tap – and their effect on the battle isn’t always as helpful as they could be. Additionally, support characters offer added humor and helpful firepower in battle, and some foes have inexplicable immunities or weaknesses to certain attacks. The game never really gets particularly tough, and you likely won’t need most of the special items until towards the end of the episode.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One screenshot

Episode One’s other RPG elements are fairly light; you’ll level-up with experience from battles, gain robot parts to upgrade your weapons, and earn special attacks for reaching certain level benchmarks. These additions are much appreciated, even if they aren’t quite robust enough to fully satisfy an RPG enthusiast’s hunger for stats, saving throws, and character progression micromanagement. This also raises the question of how all of this will carry-over and play out in subsequent episodes, since you’re party is pretty tanked-up and powerful by the time the credits roll on Episode One.

The deliciously twisted, outlandish sense of humor pervading all reaches of the game is easily one of its major selling points. The reams of dialogue you’ll click through are creatively witty and stay true to the vibe of the source material, but funny gags and obscure references appear at nearly every twist and turn. Also, humor frequently pops-up in battle. You’ll face clowns that bleed rainbow-colored blood, give you the finger, and actually bite your balls; mini-Fruit F*ckers that hump your leg and are easily distracted by tossing a ripe orange in their direction; drunken hobos that stagger at you and throw beer bottles; and mimes with attacks like “pretend I’m a fencer” and “pretend I have a lasso,” among other ridiculous adversaries.

The short-length and other minor nitpickings aside, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is absolutely worth every cent of its $20 price tag. By the end of the first installment the game will bore a hole of anticipation in your skull that yearns to be filled by future episodes. Indeed, fans of the comic will not be disappointed.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.5 Graphics
The artistic style of the game is simply excellent. Character models are a little rough, but the game excels in every other visual area. 3.7 Control
Real-time combat is a bit chaotic with the mouse and spacebar, but it works. 4.4 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Epic music and funny sound effects. Voice work is great but severely limited to a minute or two. 3.8 Play Value
The short length and occasionally tiresome combat can be a downer. The great humor and other entertaining aspects will keep you sticking with episode one to the end. 4.2 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Hilarious, over-the-top dialogue written by Jerry Holkins in a style that will be familiar to Penny Arcade fans.
  • Progressively unravel the game’s mysteries through classic adventure game play.
  • Battle an array of zany enemies with the RPG combat system.
  • An interactive Penny Arcade comic: customize the look and dress of your character, and explore the unusual world of New Arcadia.
  • Gabe, Tycho, Annarchy, The Fruit F*cker 2000 and many favorite Penny Arcade characters, plus new characters designed by Mike Krahulik.
  • Set in a steam-punk meets pulp horror meets H.P. Lovecraft alternate Penny Arcade universe.

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