I bought this game today for my Mac, although you can also purchase it on XBLA, Linux, and PC. On the XBLA version you use the joystick to control your character, on the Mac, the game is strictly point-and-click (just the way I like it)

Long story short, the game is worth every cent ($19.99). The humor is great reguardless of if you are a Penny-Arcade fan or not (It sure helps though). The cutscenes are beautifully drawn, the story is witty and clever, the item descriptions are great, and the combat is really fun. The game reminds me of the old Lucas Arts games (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max) and that's a good thing. Here are a few shots with descriptions below.


Design your character in the 3D world...


And he's transformed into the 2D world for cutscenes and dialouge.


The cutscenes are fantasticly drawn and animated.


Even with the limited number of places to explore in this episode, I can easily say they never get boring.


Interacting with characters is fun. The dialog trees are almost entirely useless, but the lines that they result in are worth it. (My sides pain from laughter)


Combat is set up RPG style, with a variety of special attacks, blocking moves, and objects to use. For example, the Fruit F***er has been distracted by the orange that was tossed infront of him. Mmmm, who wants some O.J.?


Fighting gives you more EXP and items that allow you to further 'pimp' your weapons and learn new attacks.


The game really keeps the old school adventure game feel. Even down to the interactive menu that is your office.

I had a blast with the demo, and will eventually probably end up buying it. I completely agree with all of your points, except that the 3D world looks terrible. It's a combination of cell shading and hand drawn textures, and just doesn't work.

The best part about the game is the combat system. Only sort of RPG, it's more mini game than anything.

because its PA and i have to ask

did you do the censorship on the image
or is the dialog censored?

I censored it. There is no word too vulgar for the actual game.

Which, by the way, is hilarious. In the demo alone, I had 4 laugh out loud moments, and I went into it really really skeptical. Very lucasarts indeed.

I need to play this

I am in it, at the end

It's only got four areas? Is there any news on how frequent further episodes will be, and how much they will cost?

I'd try the demo but their site is down

They said episodes will be released every 4 months or so. As for price, I don't know for sure, but I would assume they might cost $19.99 like Episode One. Which sounds like a lot, but when I think of it, I've paid $50.00 for games that are of similar gameplay length, so it doesn't really bother me. Also because I don't mind supporting PA and Hothead games.

I wondered when somebody would start a thread about this.

I played the demo on XBLA. I really disliked the controls on the 360, so maybe point and click would be less frustrating for me. I had a lot of moments when I'd be standing right in front of something and press A, only to have it select an object that was behind it. It was really annoying.

The dialog and cutscenes are pretty much the main selling point, IMO. As a long time PA fan it's what makes the game worthwhile. I'm really not an RPG fan, and the actual gameplay bores me. I'd never spend $20 on this game if it were created by anyone else, but I'd consider it to support PA.

Thrawn[numbarz] I saw you in the credits. Awesome.

I want to see a CAD webcomic based game. It would consist of nothing but narration.

And it'd cost 60 bucks, because "come on, isn't that what people pay for videogames anyway?"

?

Mass Effect

Yay! I have demo. I'll be giving it a try shortly. Glad someone told me about this because (a) I love point and click games and (b) I never would've come across it by myself.

He did the turntable on the song in the credits. (DJSnyder = Thrawn[numbarz])

Can you buy this game online? I don't want to go anywhere.

^Yes.

I really like this. It reminds me of Anachronox: Battles kind of eh, story/dialogue hilarious. The only thing I didn't enjoy was the narrator (he *never* shuts up).

Oh, the Demo *is* the game.

Yeah, it is a lot like Anachronox. I like it.

Hahahaha

That would be a pretty clever joke if it were intentional.

I mean the demo download contains the whole game, but you have to enter the registration key to progress.

They should just put it on steam...

Oh, that's pretty awesome. Congrats, Thrawn.

Fun game.

I'll definitely be picking up the next few episodes when they come out.

Yeah, especially since they just released a patch. It's not even a patch, you have to redownload the whole thing. It would have been a great fit for steam. They could have even done XBL and Steam achievements and everything.

but this was the point of their game store website, to be like steam

minus an application

I'm missing 10 parts in the hobo district.

Did you click on the rattling toolbox down the first alley you go down? I ended up getting all the parts, maxing out my characters EXP and killing every single bad guy in the game. Once you kill all the FF'ers the one in your office turns gold. Shibby!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I found everything rattling.

I got my character stuck. :/


Also, I hate episodic games.

I already have too many games piling up, waiting to be played and then comes a LucasArtsy adventure that runs on Linux.
God hates me!

It doesn't run too well on my powerbook, so I'll just have to go back to GTAIV...

I like episodic games, especially adventure games. Like the Sam and Max games. A 30, 40 hour game would just get dull, but it's really fun in 3-4 hour chunks.

Anyway, I beat the game. I think something was bugged 'cause I never found the last 10 parts.

And the ending was kind of anticlimactic. :/