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

Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One
Played on PC

Short Review

Play If: you enjoy classic turn-based battles, you like off-kilter steam punk stories, you want to kill mimes and/or clowns

Don't Play If: you want a fast-paced twitch-based game, you hate reading text, graphic depiction of fruit-lovin' upsets you


Long Review

Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is the first game in a series of episodic RPG/adventure games, brought to us by Hothead Games. The game is basically the bastard child of a three-way between a classic Final Fantasy game, a Monkey Island-esque adventure game, and Penny Arcade. Unfortunately, it is not quite the stunning specimen that description makes the game sound, as it inherits some unfortunate birth defects. First, some things I enjoyed about the game. My favorite aspect was probably the setting; the partly steam punk, partly Lovecraftian world of New Arcadia. Twisted machines, gritty locations, and malevolent dark gods work together to create a living and enjoyable alternate world. The musical score adds much to the atmosphere, as well, and overall it feels like a fully imagined world with a lot of storytelling potential. The bleakness of the atmosphere is of course tempered by Penny Arcade's usual wit, although the dialogue is often fairly straightforward and more serious that one might expect. I didn't mind the tone of the game, but I have read complaints that Rain-Slick just isn't funny enough - and, to be truthful, there are only so many penis jokes one can take before they get stale.

I did laugh out loud several times, generally when surprised by some enjoyable small detail in the game, such as the clowns bleeding rainbow, and the various descriptions for objects around the world. The game is played in the point-and-click fashion, very much reminiscent of old LucasArts adventure games. Many of the objects around the locations have witty descriptions or secret items attached to them. The graphics in the game are decent and serve their purpose; the art direction is great, but the bobbing 3-D characters sometimes feel a little out of place. The highlights of the game, for me at least, were the 2-D cut scenes, done to mimic a standard multi-panel comic page. Your avatar, customized by the player at the beginning, is inserted into these cut scenes as a 2-D character faithful to its 3-D model, which I found great. It was a lot of fun to see a character you created living out comic adventures with the guys from Penny Arcade.

Combat takes place in a turn-based environment, very much akin to the Active Time Battle System seen in the older Final Fantasy games. Characters have three options; use an item, regular attack, and special attack. Each of these options has a timer, and the respective action can only be performed when the gauge is filled. Special attacks are short mini-games, involving pressing the correct arrow keys, or hitting the space bar at correct times. You also have the option to block enemy attacks by hitting the space bar after the enemy's health bar has flashed. The combat starts out pretty slow, but as both your characters and the enemies get more powerful, you'll rarely not be clicking or pressing something at any time during battle. I found combat serviceable; nothing really special, but it gets the job done.

The plot of the game involves tracking down clues as to why a giant robot has decided to visit New Arcadia, crushing your character's house in the process. The story evolves to include angry hobos, evil mimes, and dark elder gods. As the first part of an episodic series, the game serves to lay the groundwork of further adventures for Gabe, Tycho, and your player. Thus, the game is fairly short, running about 5-6 hours to finish everything. It is also somewhat lacking in locations, and you'll be revisiting the same areas again and again during your quest. But despite the mediocre combat and other small stumbles this game makes, overall I found Rain-Slick to be extremely enjoyable. Shooting mimes, collecting urine, throwing pricks; the game is really just plain fun. If you enjoy Penny Arcade's type of humor and old-school adventure and console RPGs, you'll probably get a kick out of the game as well. But if you have any doubts, there's a demo available on the Greenhouse Interactive website via the link above. The demo gives you a good feel for the game and will definitely go a long way to convince you whether to purchase the game or not. The demo is also available on the Xbox 360 marketplace if you'd rather play it there, but I preferred the mouse and keyboard for both the movement and combat, so I opted for the PC version.