Roll for Initiative
I can't stand Tycho's writing. He's the literary half of Penny Arcade's Gabe and Tycho team. When it's just him and a block of text I can count on being irritated at least twice, annoyed once, and left with a general feeling that he could have said it all in half the space.
However, when his writing is filtered through the three panels of a comic, I love it. Gabe is a great and expressive artist, and when Tycho is forced to cut his thousand words down to twenty, they can frequently be just right. The same turns out to be thankfully true of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One.
The writing is mostly quick and funny, very much in the style of the comic. The game itself plays out in a short five or six hours. The combat system is interesting and eventually fun, but it takes some getting used to. The characters are uniformly funny and interesting to interact with. You want to beat up mimes and clowns? Who doesn't? This game delivers on both counts. Do you have a modest proposal for dealing with the rampant hobo problem? This game has the solution. When facing off against the brutally horny Fruit... Lovers you can throw out a lusciously juicy orange to stall their attacks. It actually distracts two of them, the one doing the loving, and another who watches. Pervert.
There are upgrades and potions, but not much variety. These are amusing as well, such as the potion to degrade your enemies attacks, "Extra Mild Super Weak Sauce". I think I had that at Taco Bell once.
It's the return of the funny adventure game, and I think they got it pretty much right. I look forward to the next installment.
