Penny Arcade: OTRSPODE1

I've been reading Penny Arcade for years now and am downloading the Mac demo now. It's also available for the PC, Linux, and Xbox Live Arcade.

So I went ahead and purchased the game, and a few hours in and I'm having a good time. I never got to play Sam & Max (as soon as I get boot camp up and running I will) but I imagine this is how it plays: classic point and click interface with a good sense of humor. The combat is a bit clunky at times. Trying to select the right item and who to apply it to while at the same time trying to block an attack isn't exactly intuitive, but I imagine I'll get used to it as the game progresses. I also have no idea how long the game is, so I can't say for sure if the $20 price tag is worth it, but I have faith in Mike and Jerry to deliver.

The game works fine on my Mac actually. I got that version because I've never actually played a game on my Mac and I figured it'd be more suited to the point and click aspect of the game, although those achievements were mighty tempting.

I find the humor of the game to be right up my ally actually. It doesn't have me LOL'ing at every other joke, but there's definitely a smile on my face and I don't skip through all the dialog.

Finally got around to beating this the other day (life and frustration over what to do next got in the way) and I'll agree that it's a solid first effort in the series. Once I got a handle on the combat, I found myself enjoying the battles a lot more . The story and humor were satisfying and I welcome the next installment.

Things that need to be fixed though; up the challenge a bit. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but items respawn whenever you leave and reenter a panel. This lead me to amassing quite an inventory. I had one battle that had me taking on several high level fruit fuckers who were easily disspatched with by throwing dynamite. My reward for beating them; a stick of dynamite. What was in the next box I opened: another stick of dynamite. I was able to get my characters to Level 11-12 pretty early on in the game and so from there on out I dominated every encounter resulting in battles becoming a grind-fest.

Also, I mentioned this earlier, but there were several times where I had no idea what the hell the game wanted me to do. I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, so I assume it was me, but there were several patches where I was wondering around between the ally and boardwalk with no clear destination in mind. Tycho and Gabe's only advice was to go see Anne-Claire but all she had for me was a word balloon saying "Go search the city for more clues". Thanks.

As for the price, I'd say that they should've looked into a $15 price tag. The game was beautiful to look at, the writing top notch, and there were a lot of fun things to do that I can see why they felt it right to charge more, but when you charge $20, I expect a certain amount of weight to it, be it more voice acting or more variety (there's nothing in this game that lead to hours of fucking around like Portal had).