XBLA Today: Penny Arcade

Welcome to the 1920′s edition of XBLA Today as we travel to New Arcadia to take on bizarre enemies like the fruit….thing, with plenty of Penny Arcades deranged humor. We are going to look at the game, and hopefully help you make the important decision, is this worth 1600 points ($20) to me?

The game seems to be in three genres, adventure, RPG, and comedy. If you like the comic, you will like the game. For the people that don’t care about the comic, this game may not be for you. As you may know, for RPGs and adventure games, the greatness of the game tends to fall a lot on the story, and this story falls right into PA territory. The dialogue in the game can be changed by what your character says, but it doesn’t seem to change the direction of the story at all, just makes the game come out with some crazy stuff.

The main things you will be doing gameplay wise boil down to two things. One is running around, talking to random people, and checking out/breaking random stuff. The other is fighting in the semi-real time fighting system. You have special attacks, normal attacks, and items to select from for each person. Each time you perform an action, a different timer for each character comes up, and you cannot do that action until said timer completes. The special attacks have different mini mini-games which will change how much damage is done depending on how well you do. You can also block enemy attacks by pressing the RT at the right time. In combat you control Tycho, Gabe, yourself, and the cat, T. Kemper, who does 1 damage to enemies by licking himself.

The biggest issue people seem to be having is the 1600 point ($20) price. The game is supposed to last about 7-10 hours, longer than it took most people to run through Gears of War. Part of the problem is that it’s on the Xbox Live “Arcade” service, and we have been conditioned to think arcade games are 5-10 dollars. The Penny Arcade game is more of a downloadable retail game, and the only download service for new games on the 360 is XBLA. It is the same price on PC, and seems to have the content to be worth it. It may have been smarter to put it at 1200 ($15) to avoid being the first game on XBLA to hit 1600, but you should check out the demo at least before saying the price is to high.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is at its heart, a classic adventure/RPG, with a few gameplay tweaks, infused with Penny Arcade humor and style. It looks like the comic, surprisingly like it for a 2D comic in a 3D world. There may be a price issue for some, but the games content and length may warrant such a price, if just barely. The game isn’t for everyone, as the story and dialogue are very important, and if you don’t like the Penny Arcade comic, you probably won’t like the story. For hardcore fans, the game should be a laugh out loud, fun extension of one of their favorite webcomics, and possibly worth the price point just to see where the giant fruit “thing” came from. For everyone else, try the demo first.