It’s difficult to create a game that creates genuine humour and evokes an actual laughter response from the player, and that’s what surprised me most about Stick It To The Man. What was initially another puzzle-platformer with an outgoing art-style actually turned out to be a short burst of delight, I’m glad it proved me wrong. Shame on me.
It’s Paper Mario meets Grim Fandango, but creating portmanteaus from other similar games does Stick It To The Man a disservice. Presentation wise this game is immaculate, through its unique paper and sticker art-style, humour and narrative, Stick It To The Man makes up for its short length by providing some of the best characters I’ve had the pleasure of talking to in a game before.
The game follows Ray Doewood, a hard-hat tester who, on his way home from work, is struck, ironically, on the head by a mysterious container, but what’s inside remains a mystery…for a while. Once Ray awakes from his accident, he finds a giant, pink, spaghetti-like hand is protruding from his head, but only he can see it. Using this hand, Ray can read the thoughts other others and interact with the game’s environments, which is the core mechanic of this indie title.
As Ray tries to come to terms with this new limb, he’s led down a series of misfortune events. The first couple of chapters embrace the game’s platforming genre but it doesn’t develop too far astray, never going any further than your basic “move left, jump, move right, jump some more”. It’s okay though, the game doesn’t need to be a deep, challenging platformer and it knows that, there’s a couple of areas that will require you to think about your path before you take it, in order to get pass a few enemies, but other than that, it’s the sticker and puzzle elements that really stand out.
See a man crying? Grab his tears to use as a special ingredient in a chef’s dish! Have you got the chef’s dish? Use it to lure out a horrible monster that lurks in the sewers. It’s the funny, strange turn of events that make this game one to be remembered, everyone is self aware, there’s references to Silver Surfer for NES and the game never loses its own sense of logic. The title’s “The Man” is a shadowy figure who has sent agents after Ray, agents that consistently don’t get enough sleep and are then sent to bed by their own “Zzzs”!
My only gripe with Stick It To The Man is the length. What I enjoyed of the game was less than four hours of content, amazing and hilarious content, but short all the same. I don’t know Zoink!’s plans for a sequel or DLC or whatever, but I would certainly be interested in seeing much more of Ray and his imaginary, pink hand. 1o chapters was nice, 10 more would be nicer!
I wholeheartedly recommend Stick It To The Man to everyone, the game is available for free via PS+, also available on Steam and now Wii U for £6.99 / €7.99 / $9.99.
My thanks go out to Zoink/Ripstone for providing me with a Wii U review code to produce this review.