In the process of watching my dear Tim and Eric on Adult Swim's website, I'd visually acquired a trailer for an Adult Swim original game, Gigolo Assassin. I figured it could be a pretty funny concept: a man in a banana hammock, slicin' throats left and right? So masculine.
How wrong I was.
The banana hammock was present, but that's about it. Fun was nowhere to be found and humor must've been on vacation, because this game is second rate all the way. It starts out with a group of inept looking leaders wondering what to do about a certain 'Sisterhood' mounting attacks and gaining control over various areas of the globe. Obviously, there's only one person who could take on something so terrible as The Sisterhood: Gigolo Assassin! After being hired by the aforementioned leaders, you find yourself at home with your dear old pops, Gigolo Assassin Sr. He gives you a very... thorough... tutorial on how to use the interface, which they somehow managed to make simple but awful. It's a typical point-and-click game, but of the click-here-walk-here variety. There are four buttons on the bottom that you have to use: Pick Up, Talk To, Look At, and Use. Get used to these, because they basically are the game. Normally it wouldn't be too bad, but they overlooked some simple controls that could've been easily implemented to make things easier, like instead of clicking Use, then clicking an item, then clicking what you want to use the item on, they could've set it up so you can just drag items onto objects, saving, like, eight steps.
Another issue that I have with the interface lies in talking to people. At certain points, the game is very dialogue driven, allowing you multiple options to choose from, which then stem into other succeeding options, and sometimes even further. Okay, not a big deal, I like dialogue. It gets frustrating though, when you need to find one of those specific paths to advance the story, due to the fact that if you pick the wrong option, you start back at the beginning of the dialogue, having to work your way alllll the way back to one of many tiers of speech. Speaking of speech, I came across multiple typos, which surprised me, due to Adult Swim's usual awesomeness. I assumed a certain level of quality, and it didn't meet it.
Often times items you need to find are very obscure and hidden, leaving you struggling to progress, while you tactlessly scan the screen with the mouse, descending more and more into the territory of annoyance and frustration. But then again, sometimes they're really easy to find.
The music in the game is nothing more than background music. Not that it needs to be, but it's nice when developers go above and beyond what's expected of them musically. I'm not saying it needs to be Super Mario Galaxy or anything like that, but something better than a few minute long loops would've been nice.
My main problem with the game is that it's LONG. SO long. I spent half of the day off and on playing this game, half due to frustration, half due to length. And I only got through the first of three missions. This game is long enough to where I wish there was a save point, or a checkpoint, or something. At least go old school, NES-like, gimme a password once I hit a certain point.
So like I said, it's very disappointing for an Adult Swim production. Maybe I just hold them to too high of a standard 'cause of their broadcasted awesomeness, but I really think they could've done a lot better. There were a few moments where I chuckled a bit, particularly at the very end of the first mission, I don't wanna spoil it but it was laughtastic. For a few seconds. So while I probably won't be returning to finish the second, let alone, third mission, I don't wanna dissuade anyone from playing this game, 'cause you may get something out of it that was lost on me. But I wasn't feelin' it much.
2/5
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