Stick It To The Man

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Platformer

Players: 1

.

Review:

Stick It To The Man is a Graphic Adventure with some light Platformer elements about a man who gains the ability to manipulate objects and minds using a strange hand coming out of his head. This game was originally released on multiple platforms in 2013, and brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

The presentation here is fairly unique, going for a paper-thin style of presentation similar to the likes of the Paper Mario games, but with a more stylized, caricature sorta’ art style, with characters who speak using flip-top heads like Canadians on South Park. This comes with fully voiced characters and a tongue-in-cheek self-referential sense of humor that’s one of the game’s best qualities – this is a game to aim for if you want something to chuckle at, not anything truly deep or puzzling.

Speaking of puzzling, this game’s puzzles come in the form of having you use your strange pink stretchy hand to latch onto various items in the environment, as well as to read minds (which can both help you get information for puzzle-solving as well as produce more objects to latch onto). It’s rarely anything especially difficult or mind-boggling, but it does give you an excuse to see what each character is thinking.

There are a few issues here that make it more frustrating than it should be, though. Firstly, before long you’ll find yourself chased by mysterious men working for a shadowy employer, and these parts feel like a bad stealth game where getting caught forces you to go back to the last checkpoint. In addition, the game’s camera zooms in and out as it sees fit, which is usually find, but on occasion this can obscure places you can go to, or might want to interact with.

However, probably the biggest frustration here is something that wasn’t included. The Nintendo Switch version of the game doesn’t support gyroscopic motion controls or touchscreen controls, which really would have helped when it comes to using the hand to latch onto things. As it is, players have to carefully use the control stick to indicate what they want to interact with, and often the game simply will not want to cooperate with you, making selecting the person or thing you want to interact with needlessly frustrating.

As a result, Stick It To The Man is an otherwise decent Graphic Adventure with some good humor to it, but one that is often frustrating to play. Fans of the genre still may want to give it a look if they haven’t played it elsewhere, but most are better off skipping this one.

tl;dr – Stick It To The Man is a Graphic Adventure about a guy who gains the ability to use a hand coming out of his head to interact with objects and read minds. This game has a good sense of humor, but it’s made frustrating by annoying stealth elements and some control issues. Fans of the genre still may want to give it a try, but most are better off skipping it.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}