Stick It To The Man

pro

Ray is just a normal guy living a normal life. He's got a girlfriend, lives in a world made up of cardboard and stickers, tests hard-hats for a living because he's very conscious about safety, and there's a spaghetti hand sticking out of his head with the ability to read people's thoughts and even steal them. Life takes a weird turn for Ray as he realizes the latter fact after a freak accident, and so begins an amazingly funny, eccentric and delightful adventure featuring a likeable guy and some seriously messed up people.

pro

Stick It to the Man is a very pure platform experience where you traverse the landscape by walking, jumping or pulling yourself towards certain spots by grabbing pins with your fancy pink spaghetti hand. At its very core Stick It to the Man is a point and click adventure with the occasional action sequence, but those are based on you getting away from the bad guys. Puzzles are solved by taking people's thoughts and using them on other people or objects to solve a particular predicament. If a person is crying or thinking about something sad, you'll be able to take those tears and stick them on something else. If a guard is sleepy, you can steal that thought and stick it right back at him to make him fall asleep. The controls are both easy and intuitive and doesn't steal any attention away from the wackiness on screen.

pro

The star of the show might be Ray, but that's only until you meet the rest of the cast. With the ability to read people's mind, you will soon take a deep and disturbing dive into the psychology of twisted people, animals, robots and the occasional skeleton. The stuff they have to say is mostly absurd, always hilarious. To top it off, they are also graced with top notch voice acting which makes their inner monologues even more disturbing. This is by far the thing you will and probably should spend most of your time indulging in throughout the ten chapters of the game.

pro

The writing is impeccable, the inclusion of original music is neat and the total package is a 4-6 hour trip to crazyville well worth the cost of admission. I'd be happy to play whatever Zoink! Comes up with next.

con

Don't expect to be anywhere near challenged by the puzzles in the game. I would've appreciated some more depth to them with more stickers and maybe even some added obscurity. The solution to each one is pretty obvious once you get an overview of the level you're in.

con

There is little to no replay value. With such heavy emphasis on dialogue, no collectibles (except reading minds) and the ease of platforming, I wouldn't expect a return unless you really want to hear some of the fruity conversations over again which you can do through chapter select.