Written by Thomas Sharpe
The memorable duo list is long, and while not
philosophically as potent as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, McQueen and Dooley
in Darkside Detective are far funnier. I think you’re meant to
find Rosencrantz and Gildenstern funny. Or maybe ribbingly meta. Or hilariously
intertextual. But there’s more of the Morcombe and Wise in McQueen and Dooley,
thankfully. Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are visually reminiscent of Hall and
Oates, with their rakish flocculence, and this is arguably their only real
source of humour.
There’s certainly more of Sam and Max with McQueen and
Dooley, but without the American bombast. When, at the time of Indiana Jones
and Sophia Hapgood in Fate of Atlantis, Lucasarts point and clicks
never quite peaked the surreality of Sam and Max, and one could argue that
McQueen and Dooley in Darkside Detective are a successful
descendant. Especially in a vast landscape of over-zany (Edna and Harvey) and
perhaps over-whimsical (Vella and Shay) duos that read more like a Joss Whedon
script (largely interchangeable dialogue that could be attributed to any
character).
Darkside Detective, with it’s allusions to a broad
avenue of spooky pop-culture, delivers magic like Penn and Teller rather than
Siegfried and Roy. Joyful, ironic and minimal animal abuse. The writers have
managed to not just give textual homages at the rate of Pegg and Stevenson
in Spaced, but incredibly gave it breathing room where others get
bogged down in a referential mire. Maybe it’s just that Spooky Doorway’s silly
humour lightens me rather than paws at me, much like the comparable yet
different results of Reeves and Mortimer when set next to the at times
cringingly try-hard Fielding and Barratt. A similar result is the products of
collaborations between Pratchett and Gaiman, who maddeningly make something
less playful and fun than Adams and Lloyd, with their Meaning of Liff,
a true philosophical benchmark.
The puzzles and gameplay of Darkside are
balanced and largely amusing, rather than the travails of Rincewind and Luggage
in the egregious Discworld point and click, which is
notoriously left-field. Nico and George from Broken Sword were
left in the dust by contrast, despite that excruciating goat puzzle in the
first game. The big and blocky pixels are a reverse of Jake and Dinos Chapman,
subsuming the player in a just-rich-enough visual style to evoke nostalgia and
playful simplicity in good measure. Crucially, Darkside Detective tries
much less hard than the painful conceit of this missive, and is one of the
funniest games I’ve played in years.
Overall 10/10
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