REVIEW: Stick it to The Man!

When the tile screen of a game features an iconic 60’s Rock song that immediately transports you to the dream scene of the Big Lebowski, you know you are in for something special. That sums up my first experience on loading up Zoink!’s latest puzzle platformer. I actually lost 5 minutes listening to ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)’ before I even started the game.

When I finally did press ‘A’ what I got was a bizarre, psychedelic, infuriating, joyful, hilarious and unique experience that blows many more expensive titles out of the water.

Stick it to the Man! is a title that has been bouncing around for a little while now. Its seen Steam, Mac, PS3, PS4 and Vita releases before finally dropping on the Xbox One and 360.

This is a platform puzzle game very much in the style of the classic Lucasarts SCUMM titles of the early 90’s. In the best possible way on more than one occasion I was giving flashes of nostalgia for Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. That familiarity wasn’t just found in the style of play, but in the nuanced difficulty and the witty writing.

At the fundamental level the game requires you to move around a series of ‘2D levels’ (well not quite 2D, there is a wonderful parallax animation at play), picking up items and clues from the various characters. You then apply lateral thinking to combine or use them in order to progress. It’s not a new style of game, and in fact you could argue it’s one of the classic styles. However, the application here is just something that feels at the same time comfortably familiar and yet freshly applied.

The twist comes in the fact that, following a freak accident involving hard-hats (or lack thereof) you (‘Ray’) wake up to discover a giant purple ‘spaghetti arm’ sticking out of your head. While the left stick moves Ray around the levels, the right stick aims and directs your new appendage. The arm can be used to help move around, by grabbing pins and pulling you to unreachable areas. However, the arm (which it turns out is invisible to everyone else) can do much more than that.; it is a tool for puzzle solving and interacting with the environment.

You see the entire game is created in papercraft. It is hand drawn and then animated. Just thinking about the amount of work that must have required makes me want to sit down for a cup of tea, but it was so very worth it. The game just looks gorgeous. It’s a hyper-stylised, minimalistic design that oozes the TLC that clearly went into it. The style helps both the design and the colours pop and hit you in full HD. Bright neon often strikes against a cardboard brown, which is both great to look at, and functional (in that it helps identify which parts you are intended to interact with).

More than that, the style perfectly conveys the tone and feeling that the title music foreshadowed, in that the whole game feels like a surreal ‘trip’, with you never sure whether you have completely left the deranged thoughts of the main character. That papercraft world is not ignored, but rather it is actually a main feature of the game. You see, you can use your ‘pink spaghetti arm’ to rip pieces off the world.

Most often this comes in the form of ‘stickers’ which are items (anything from a rubber ring to a chimney, via ‘scary eyes’ and robot antenna) to be removed from one context and repurposed in another somewhere else in the level. From time to time you are also able to rip sections from the scenery (such as the front wall of a building) to give you access to new areas, information or items.

The final use of the arm is also the most bizarre. You can read people’s thoughts by ‘grabbing’ their brains with it. In fact everything from prison wardens and factory workers to stuffed cats and zombies are up for sharing their deep contemplations with you. This is how you get information about the level as a whole, how you progress the story, but most importantly how you discover and get clues for the many puzzles that need to be solved to let you progress. In fact, if a character ‘thinks’ of an item, you can probably grab it as a sticker to use elsewhere.

For example; You may need a yeti to smash down a door, but reading his thoughts lets you know that his bald spot is making him too shy. However, if you can make one of the zombies in the Zombie Choir sing like Elvis, it may be enough to make the choirmaster tear his hair out…..

Yeah… its THAT surreal.

It is also hilarious. The comedy is present throughout, and always has a very dark edge to it. This boosts the general feel of the game and provides a compulsion to keep playing even when the puzzles are getting the best of you. The humour is macabre, off the wall and consistently self-referential -often breaking the 4th wall while leaving you wondering whether you are leading the main character through a bad day or a psychotic break.

The final element of a game like this is the difficulty. Obviously a puzzle game lives or dies on its difficulty level. Too easy and the game is forgettable, too hard and it never gets finished. For me, at least, Stick it to the Man! Gets it absolutely right. There was more than one occasion when I felt myself frustrated at a puzzle, but the writing and gameplay kept me entertained until I achieved my ‘Eureka moment’.

In summary this game is off the wall, bizarre and at times just plain odd. It’s also incredible fun, compelling and a wonderful, eccentric stand-out title.

For only £6.39 this title once again proved Microsoft’s commitment to sourcing and bringing Xbox gamers amazing titles at affordable prices with the ID@Xbox program. If you are tired of exploring alien landscapes with an assault rifle, this is a breath of fresh air you need in your life.

What are you waiting for? Grab it here: Stick it to the Man! MS store

or watch this and THEN go buy it: