Stick It to the Man!

Stick it to the man is a game about using your surroundings to progress through a variety of obstacles, the central mechanic and the idea that separates this game from other puzzle based adventure games is the ability to listen to and manipulate the thoughts of every other character in any given environment. Ray, the main character, can take possession of real world objects and the thoughts of certain characters all of which take the form of stickers. After taking possession of these stickers Ray can then place the stickers in other places where they would solve the various problem presented to the player. This game reminds me of Psychonauts which also revolved around the infiltration of others minds and thoughts. While stick it to the man is a much simpler game than Psychonauts from a mechanics perspective, the quirky cast of characters and the literally twisted environments the player traverses.

The environment aesthetic of stick it to the man has the feeling as though all of the level designers from double fine were trapped in a room and forced to create an entire game with the little big planet level creator, all of the characters are made out of paper and their surroundings are made from cardboard cutouts with crayon drawings detailing what the cutout is meant to represent. The central aesthetic of stick it to the man lends itself greatly to the type of humor the game puts out, playful but in some cases dark and twisted. It is unfortunate that the player may grow tired of the levels after being forced to run around trying to solve the not so interesting puzzles.Stick it to the man is one of very few games in my opinion that are able to be funny consistently with very clever writing and talented voice work all throughout. For an indie game stick it to the man has a large amount of voice actors and throughout the entire game every character felt unique. The lead and from what I could gather the only writer of stick it to the man is Ryan North, and while I haven’t read any of his other work which include the Adventure Time Comic his writing in Stick it to the man reminds me a lot of the writing in the adventure time television series, very quick witted and organic. Unfortunately the path to reaching more of his writing is not as interesting or enjoyable.

The designers could have included a unique outcome for placing the wrong stickers in certain places and while this might have taken time to implement it would have elevated this game exponentially, all that needed to be added was a unique line of dialogue explaining why this sticker wouldn’t work from Ray but instead the player only gets one of about four general statements on why this sticker is incorrect. Including this would have made running back and forth a level less tiring and more of a reward for trying all the different combinations especially later on when the games environments become very large and getting from one side to another becomes a chore and even with the inclusion of the warp pipes. Another problem with running around the level is the way the map is designed, everything that the player has interacted with before checking the map is marked with a purple oval and everything that hasn’t been is labeled with a question mark. The game would have benefited from a more detailed map explaining what the player should have gathered from the interactions they have already had with the other characters. Not necessarily marking where the player needs to place stickers but at least where there are areas that have spots to place the stickers and maybe even giving a different color to the characters that don’t have a sticker puzzle attached to them. A lot of the issues with the central puzzle solving mechanic seem to stem from the designers wanting the game to have more of a challenge than it needed. Stick it to the man is a game where the writing and voice acting could easily carry it by itself but the artificial difficulty placed onto the interactions drags the whole game down.The main mechanic of moving around the stickers lacks any sort of accomplishment because it almost always results in placing every sticker you have in every slot due to the lack of any form of punishment or reward for placing the wrong sticker. Usually the puzzles are pretty straightforward in what the solution is but coming to find what sticker will lead to this solution can be extremely convoluted. During the on level which took place in a psychiatric ward I was left with a dead whale that was to be used to make my final escape from the island and end the level. Unfortunately, after multiple levels of not being put into use the game reintroduced a mechanic of characters being able to follow Ray if he presented them with the right sticker. This mechanic was first introduced when Ray had to lead a heart that was barking like a dog with a bone sticker to get the heart back to his imaginary girlfriend. In this case the bone sticker was literally the only available sticker to the player and it was found on a linear path if the player continued going right. In the case of the asylum, the player has the possibility to have at least three stickers and also hasn’t led anything anywhere with a sticker for at least an hour of gameplay. I removed a bag sticker from one of the characters in the asylum which resulted in the character being unhappy that I took it, then the game thought I would be smart enough to know the character would want it back. Expecting the player to do something that is entirely out of the character that Ray has been built up to at this point is absurd, in any game especially an adventure game there is a point where the suspension of disbelief includes agreeing with a certain logic that the player has been presented with, to change this logic for the sake of one puzzle or interaction is contrary to this.

Speaking of artificial difficulty the second and only other activity that the game consist of is the process of running away from the “agents” that want the alien inside of Ray’s mind. Running from the agents can range from tedious to full on frustrating after being caught by them enough. These sections are far too simple to be taking up so much of the player’s time, eventually the game adds on the use of applying sleeping and confusion stickers to guards to more easily slip by them. Later on in the game though there are so many guards thrown at the player at once that the stickers become just a hassle to use as opposed to just running as fast as you can to the exit past the guards. These sections could have been removed entirely and the game most likely would have benefited from it. Ray isn’t as fast or agile as you want him to be in these sections and their inclusion only makes me feel like the designers wanted the game to have enemies even though it doesn’t need them. They could have been removed from the gameplay entirely and the story could have remained the same, although there is one scripted section where Ray is forced to run from the agents that worked pretty well as he ran past all the previous encounters he had with other characters inside of his own mind, pretty much literally running down memory lane. Other than that the agents are only another hindrance to an otherwise great game.

Stick it to the man is a game that ranges from hilarious and quick to frustrating and bogged down pretty frequently due to the designers decision to dilute all of the great writing and world interactions with frustrating level design and artificial difficulty but I would still suggest if you enjoy the comedy in things like Psychonauts and adventure time it is well worth your time at even full price. If it comes out for free on play station plus for free which is how I got it you should definitely get it just to experience the world that studio Zoink has created because it really is something special even with the annoyances that were included.