Ever since Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One was announced, I’ve been waiting with bated breath to play it.  I’m not a Penny Arcade fanatic, although I do take an hour or so a month to scroll through weeks and weeks of their strips, but knowing that a turn-based RPG with a sense of humor would be available got me excited.  When it finally arrived, I downloaded it immediately and dove right in.

Right off the bat, the art style jumps off the screen, looking much like an animated version of their comic strip. A wonderful bonus is the fact that you start off creating a character (with a rather limited creation system), which is then fully integrated into the game’s cut-scenes.  It’s a real treat to see your own creation so well represented in the story, and that explains why there aren’t a ton of options for customizing your character.  The graphics are crisp and the animation is consistently fluid, making it really seem like you’re getting a polished game.

The gameplay is a mixture of active time battle and turn based RPG elements.  Although that might turn off some gamers, rest assured the battles require precise timing and constant attention (especially if you’re trying for all the achievements).  There are also special attacks which require a quick button pressing mini-game in order to be properly executed, adding a little more depth to the fighting system.  The fighting system isn’t exactly deep, but for a turn based game, it keeps you engaged and doesn’t get tiring throughout the 3 major stages of the game.

One of the places the game suffers most is in the sound department.  There is a narrator at the beginning of the game, but he disappears after the first stage, and that’s the end of the voice acting.  There are very few sound effects, and this is most noticeable during battles, where you’ll hear the same 4 or 5 sounds over and over again.  The soundtrack is impressive, and doesn’t grate on you, but it’s not enough to cover for the rest of the audio-deficiencies.  Another negative aspect is the lack of any type of store to buy items.  Instead, you are forced to break box after box after box to find items (although enemies drop them as well).  Also, the level-up system is a little simplistic and totally automatic, there are no new weapons, only upgrades and there aren’t very many item types.

But the real selling point of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is the story, and it’s a wonderful one.  Although the creators don’t exactly break new ground with the overall plot, their unique sense of humor shines through in every aspect of the game, from the character designs, to the dialogue and item descriptions.  This is probably the funniest game I’ve played since Psychonauts, and the humor doesn’t trail off at the end like in Psychonauts. You definitely do not need to be a fan of (or even have read) Penny Arcade to enjoy this game.  There are certainly quite a few inside jokes, but they are normally relegated to signs in the background or lines the NPCs will state, so the uninitiated won’t feel left out.

At 1600 Microsoft Points ($20), PAAOTRSPODEO is the priciest XBLA game yet, and it’s the biggest stumbling block for most people I’ve talked to. Hearing that a 4-6 hour game is running twenty bucks seems to turn people off, but how many non-puzzle games are there on LIVE that have that much original content?  Not many. And it’s a disappointment when the game is over, but not the kind of disappointment where you wish you could take your points back, it’s the kind where you wish you could play the next episode right away.  There are only 3 main stages (with two smaller stages where very little happens aside from a tutorial) but they are each totally unique and allow for a good bit of exploration (especially for achievement whores like me) Bottom line, it’s definitely worth the money if you enjoy the humor (check out the demo to be sure), enjoy a good turn based RPG or like to try something different now and again.  With so many people complaining about the amount of utter crap on XBLA, it’s nice to see a game like PAAOTRSPODEO come along and silence them (until the next Sudoku game shows up).

If you’re reading this blog, you’ll most likely enjoy the humor of PAAOTRSPODEO (not that we’re anywhere near as talented as they, just we tend to skew on the darker/more cynical side of humor) and shouldn’t hesitate downloading the game.  It’s short, but not too short where you don’t get your money’s worth.  I can’t wait till Episode Two.

Score: B+

Duke

Oh and an unrelated side comment: Rather than de-list underperforming games to de-clutter the system, isn’t it about time for a complete overhaul of the store system? It’s just too big to keep it like it is, having to scroll through hundreds of pages of stuff, not knowing what most of it is, and having to wait for a slow scroll on the right side of the screen to give you a poorly written description is not going to cut it anymore.  It’s Time for a redesign Microsoft!  I hear you’ve got a few guys that work on this kind of stuff, so how about putting it into the Fall Update?