PLATFORM: PC, SWITCH (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
During a night of debauchery down at the lab, a scientist throws up on some machinery that leads to Troy – a mutated monstrosity consisting of nothing but two heads, possibly three mouths (there might be a fourth round the back somewhere) and two gigantic wobbly arms – escaping from his containment capsule / chamber / thing. Now it’s up to you – or you and a friend – to take control of Troy’s arms and help him to navigate the weird world he’s woken up in.
Your left thumbstick controls Troy’s left arm, and the right stick controls the right. Squeezing a trigger makes the corresponding hand grip onto most surfaces, which allows Troy to be hauled along the ground, flung down stairs or propelled through the air. Eventually, a handful of special abilities become available and Troy will be able to detach his limbs at will, slow down time and graft his arms onto the environment, all useful for traversing the game’s many fiendishly laid-out levels.
Struggling is a really accurate name. It perfectly describes what most players will very likely be doing with the controls – not because they don’t work, but because it’s nightmarishly difficult to control one solitary arm alongside another player (where you both become versions of the Chuckle Brothers, needing no other words than increasingly-frustrated cries of “to me… to you…”), let alone being responsible for both at once in single-player mode. It’s also what you’ll be doing – in a good way – in terms of trying to comprehend the bizarre events that are unfolding in this Ren & Stimpy meets PG-rated Rick & Morty-style world, which is easily the game’s strongest point. If you can get on board with the controls, there’s certainly a fun time to be had. But, at the same time, “struggling” might also describe your enthusiasm for pushing through some of the trickier sections…