The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So I finally got around to playing through Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2. The experience was significantly enjoyable. The original game has one major conceptual problem and one stupid problem that bothers me. Surprisingly, for this episode, they fixed the major issue and not the stupid problem.

The major problem with episode 1 was the fact that there was like 2 locations and you went to them like 30 times over and over again with new monsters on fetch quests. That was really not cool. The writing was up to Penny Arcade’s awesome standard, and the combat was surprisingly engaging, but the story, being a series of fetch-quests, was less than compelling.
They really fixed that with this game. Granted, there was maybe one more area than in the last game? But they make you go to them in an intelligent fashion. Instead of doing one thing, and then being sent on a quest, and then doing that, then being sent on another quest, you start with one objective, which slowly balloons much more naturally until you have a bunch of inter-connected quests, each of which requires going from area to area several times, but you’re doing it to figure out how to comply with the odd quests you’re given in a much more organic way, so it’s much, much less annoying, and actually makes the whole game feel more… significant. Well, that and some of the story.

Hey, this next two paragraphs have plotish spoilers, so… skip that, if you want. Until the next empty line.
The game did some very, very awesome things with Penny Arcade-style cameos and reusing of characters from the last episode. The killing off of basically every character you met in last and this episode so quickly and at random was actually a fairly effective storytelling device. I’m not connected to these people in the same way that I’m, say, connected to my dog in Fable 2, but in most of the episodic games, once a character shows up, they keep reappearing, because it’s easy to do and effective. Seeing these people again made it seem like the pee doctor and whatnot would be coming back again and again. And then bam. Dead. All bets were off, and they made it clear that they are going to make the story they want, no matter what, and nobody is really safe in this world. It was nice, and also fit with the crazy-ass brutality of the world, as well. Villains in the world they’ve created WOULDN’T just walk in and give a speech. They really would kill everyone. If this is a world where I can murder random annoying people with gardening tools, the villain can totally destroy every single person he wants to.
I also got really, really excited when I met Dr. Raven Darktalon Blood. His assist attack was effective, but nothing like what I was expecting. Then, at the end of the game, the preview for the next episode made it damn clear that he’s going to be an important part in it. I. Can’t. Wait. He’s just a hilarious concept that could be rolled into this game so, so well. I really can’t wait to see what happens.

The stupid little thing they didn’t fix was the fact that the text is barely, barely readable on an SD TV. It is hurt my eyes small. I was hoping they would fix that before the next episode, and they did not. Stupid bastards, a lot of people still have Standard Def! Stop being dicks! Still, it didn’t ruin the game overall. It was just annoying.

But yeah, still, this game was fun times, and I’m signed up for the other two episodes, especially now that they dropped the price per episode to the more palatable $15. I mean, if you like solid, Mini-game and timing based RPG combat and Penny Arcade’s writing style, you really can’t go wrong. Really.