Don't be sluggish, you dandy.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is an Xbox Live Arcade game developed by a new developer called The Odd Gentlemen. Winterbottom is certainly an odd gentleman, and the game begins with him stealing an obscene amount of pies, and proceeding to muck up a whole list of things in the process. Your progress through the game is measured both by repairing all the damage your selfish, pie-snatching habits have caused, as well as collecting, well... more pies. Oh yeah, and Winterbottom can clone himself, presumably because of the magical god-pie that instills sir Winterbottom with his purpose for the entirety of the game.
So yeah, this game is about pies. You progress through a series of puzzling levels where the objective is to collect all the pies on screen. Sometimes you have to collect them all in a strict time limit, sometimes in a specific order, and sometimes there are just pits of fire making things a bit more complicated. No matter the situation, the answer is always to create clones of yourself by holding the right trigger. The key is that any action you perform while holding the trigger will be repeated by a clone once you release it, and it isn't long into the game before you have a whole mess of clones that you can play around with.
An interesting part about Winterbottom is that the levels are simply designed, and usually there are many, many ways to complete them, based on how you think. This also makes the game rather easy for a puzzle game, and I rarely found myself stuck on a level for more than 5 or 10 minutes, and I completed the majority of the levels on my first or second try. This makes the game very short, and while it keeps it from being frustrating, it also keeps it from being very rewarding. Overall I found most of the levels to be sort of bland and uninteresting, but there are a few that are entertaining and challenging.
The presentation of the game is probably it's strongest point. From the whimsical design of Winterbottom himself, to the bizarre pie-centered plot, to the hilarious taunts you receive occasionally referring to Winterbottom as "crudstache" or "turdmuffin", it's good for a few chuckles. Other than the quirky sense of humor found in P.B. Winterbottom, nothing else really stuck with me, and I found it to be a pretty forgettable experience. There is certainly nothing bad about this game, but there is nothing particularly special about it either.
