StrainedEyes
All the way up it!
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http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/16549/Xbox-Live-Arcade-Wednesdays-Penny-Arcade-Adventures/
It came out this morning. I haven't tried it yet but am going to go download the trial.
It's 1600 points.
OXM Review
It came out this morning. I haven't tried it yet but am going to go download the trial.
It's 1600 points.
OXM Review
Penny Arcade Adventures
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1
Humor me, if you will...
For tons of reasons, Penny Arcade Adventures is not your average arcade game. Rated Mature for good reasons like strong language and adult content, it's a stark contrast to the family-friendly puzzlers that pepper the service, and its comic-book look belies its extreme NSFW nature. On a technical level, it has retail-quality production values and as much gameplay meat as many DVD-based games, and it's the first episodic game on Arcade. And it costs an XBLA-record-high 20 bucks.
So it's best not to think of On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness as just an Arcade game. We think it's better labeled as a retail game whose distribution method happens to be digital. And it's also one of the service's shiniest gems.
Set in a fictional 1920s steampunk-era town called New Arcadia, Penny Arcade Adventures first tasks you with creating a custom character, whose home is quickly stomped by a fruit-loving 50-foot tall robot. Connecting with the storm-chasing Gabe and Tycho from the thrice-weekly webcomic, you'll party up and seek out the mechanical monstrosity, getting to know the quirky duo rather well in the process as you solve the mystery behind the casa-crushing invader.
At its heart, Penny Arcade Adventures is an adventure game, the likes of which has not yet been seen in the Xbox 360 era and was rarely heard from during the original-Xbox days. Though you won't be combining items to solve puzzles in the traditional point-and-click sense, you'll engage in plenty of dialogue-tree conversations with people ranging from slightly odd to truly insance, such as a "urologist" who has been canvassing one of New Arcadia's three neighborhoods with his own golden showers.
It's this off-kilter writing, in fact, that is Penny Arcade Adventures' strongest suit and brings us nostalgically close to the LucasArts-penned adventure-game glory days of the 90's. Web-comic author and Penny Arcade Adventures scriptwriter Jerry "Tycho" Holkins possesses an obvious respect for those classics, and nearly everything in the world can be examined. Your reward for poking at every nook and cranny is always some kind of goofy description that's sure to elicit at least a chuckle. (Even smashing a box that proves to be empty, for instance, yields the message "Empty... just like your soul" or "Empty... but better than a poke in the eye.") Visual gags abound, too, such as bloodthirsty clowns that flip you off just before succumbing to death and gorgeous animated cel-shaded cutscenes that depict, for example, an enraged Gabe beating an inanimate fortuneteller to death.
And then there's the combat, which is more role-playing than adventure. Though not real-time, the game's battle system is time-based in its turns, meaning your attacks have a cool-down period before you can use them again. Special attacks - whose damage potential is set by a few different time-the-button-press-properly mini-games - take far longer to ready, while your high-damage-dealing support characters can be called upon only once every few encounters. The difficulty and pacing ramp up smoothly but never prove overwhelming or tedious.
Finally, while you're certain to get more enjoyment out of Penny Arcade Adventures if you're already a Penny Arcade fan, it's hardly a pre-requisite. Oh, and don't sweat the price. Sure, you've been conditioned to expect $10 as the default cost of original Arcade releases, but again, this isn't your traditional Arcade offering. Twenty bucks is a perfectly reasonable sum when you consider how many retail Xbox 360 games offer the same quantity of content... and we'll bet you didn't laugh half as much playing any of those as you will playing this.
The verdict
+ Funny dialogue and item descriptions
+ Engaging combat system
- The game doesn't always highlight what you want to click on.
? Will the masses freak out at the price?
8.5
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1
Humor me, if you will...
For tons of reasons, Penny Arcade Adventures is not your average arcade game. Rated Mature for good reasons like strong language and adult content, it's a stark contrast to the family-friendly puzzlers that pepper the service, and its comic-book look belies its extreme NSFW nature. On a technical level, it has retail-quality production values and as much gameplay meat as many DVD-based games, and it's the first episodic game on Arcade. And it costs an XBLA-record-high 20 bucks.
So it's best not to think of On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness as just an Arcade game. We think it's better labeled as a retail game whose distribution method happens to be digital. And it's also one of the service's shiniest gems.
Set in a fictional 1920s steampunk-era town called New Arcadia, Penny Arcade Adventures first tasks you with creating a custom character, whose home is quickly stomped by a fruit-loving 50-foot tall robot. Connecting with the storm-chasing Gabe and Tycho from the thrice-weekly webcomic, you'll party up and seek out the mechanical monstrosity, getting to know the quirky duo rather well in the process as you solve the mystery behind the casa-crushing invader.
At its heart, Penny Arcade Adventures is an adventure game, the likes of which has not yet been seen in the Xbox 360 era and was rarely heard from during the original-Xbox days. Though you won't be combining items to solve puzzles in the traditional point-and-click sense, you'll engage in plenty of dialogue-tree conversations with people ranging from slightly odd to truly insance, such as a "urologist" who has been canvassing one of New Arcadia's three neighborhoods with his own golden showers.
It's this off-kilter writing, in fact, that is Penny Arcade Adventures' strongest suit and brings us nostalgically close to the LucasArts-penned adventure-game glory days of the 90's. Web-comic author and Penny Arcade Adventures scriptwriter Jerry "Tycho" Holkins possesses an obvious respect for those classics, and nearly everything in the world can be examined. Your reward for poking at every nook and cranny is always some kind of goofy description that's sure to elicit at least a chuckle. (Even smashing a box that proves to be empty, for instance, yields the message "Empty... just like your soul" or "Empty... but better than a poke in the eye.") Visual gags abound, too, such as bloodthirsty clowns that flip you off just before succumbing to death and gorgeous animated cel-shaded cutscenes that depict, for example, an enraged Gabe beating an inanimate fortuneteller to death.
And then there's the combat, which is more role-playing than adventure. Though not real-time, the game's battle system is time-based in its turns, meaning your attacks have a cool-down period before you can use them again. Special attacks - whose damage potential is set by a few different time-the-button-press-properly mini-games - take far longer to ready, while your high-damage-dealing support characters can be called upon only once every few encounters. The difficulty and pacing ramp up smoothly but never prove overwhelming or tedious.
Finally, while you're certain to get more enjoyment out of Penny Arcade Adventures if you're already a Penny Arcade fan, it's hardly a pre-requisite. Oh, and don't sweat the price. Sure, you've been conditioned to expect $10 as the default cost of original Arcade releases, but again, this isn't your traditional Arcade offering. Twenty bucks is a perfectly reasonable sum when you consider how many retail Xbox 360 games offer the same quantity of content... and we'll bet you didn't laugh half as much playing any of those as you will playing this.
The verdict
+ Funny dialogue and item descriptions
+ Engaging combat system
- The game doesn't always highlight what you want to click on.
? Will the masses freak out at the price?
8.5
