There have been a number of attempts to get the point and click
genre to connect with both modern day gamers and to fit onto consoles in a more
natural way. Stick it to the Man is the latest game to try and add a bit more adventure
to our lives and does so with some platform elements, a bunch of stickers and a
strange alien spaghetti hand.
The somewhat crazy story follows the character of safety
helmet tester Ray. One day on his way home a strange canister drops out of the
sky and hits him on the head. The canister contains a strange little alien named
Ted (Who looks a bit like a cute Krang from the Turtles cartoon). Ted hides
inside Ray’s brain and grants him the power to read people’s minds via a giant
alien spaghetti arm he now has growing out of his head.
It sounds odd and it is, invoking more than a few memories
of Psychonaughts in terms of style and tone. Ray must use his new powers to
escape the people who are hunting him and find out what has happened to his
girlfriend. This is done via a combination of light platforming sections and
using the hand to read people’s minds, find out what they want and then
slapping the appropriate sticker into their thought bubble.
The graphical style of the game represents the world in a pop-up
book style. Characters are paper thin and everything comes across like a twisted
comic book. It’s a style that works really well and it helps to add charm and
humour to the already excellent script and characters. Stripping the outside of
buildings off like paper to reveal what’s going on inside in a particularly
nice touch.
The game is 2D and has Ray move around a set map. Around the
map are agents looking to capture him and this is where the platforming comes
in. You can use Ray’s alien hand to grab hold of drawing pins and pull him to different
places. Using this ability and a combination of stickers that make agents fall
asleep or become confused, you have to make your way undetected past the goons
to the next area. Being caught results in restarting from a nearby checkpoint
so though the controls can be a little bit loose it never caused us any
frustration.
The puzzles for the most part are fairly logical (at least within
the logic of the world), and we never came across anything that had us stumped
or frustrated for a massive amount of time. The only slightly odd puzzles that
are likely to stop you dead are when you need to get people to follow you. One
in the mental asylum springs to mind where a character repeatedly said that an
object would be perfect for her cat but actually needed to be led somewhere
else.
Puzzles generally involve reading a characters mind which
creates a thought bubble. From here it’s all about grabbing stickers from people’s
thoughts and taking them to the appropriate place to use them. This is what you’ll
be doing for the bulk of your time and it’s a testament to the design that it doesn’t
feel like one giant fetch quest (which effectively all point and click
adventures are).
Stick it to the Man isn’t massively long but it offers up an
inventive and fun adventure that you can’t help but like. It came as a nice
surprise as we hadn’t really heard much about the game before. What we have
here is a combination of a good script and some fun play mechanics which create
a fairly unique title. If you’re looking for something a little different or
want to test out your puzzle solving skills then this could be the game for
you.
Overall 8/10
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