Stick it to the Man Review

We’ve all had those days where we wake up, to find a purple spaghetti arm coming out of your head. No? Well this is what happens to our protagonist Ray, and only he can see this magical spaghetti arm. The main aim of Stick it to the Man is to solve other people’s weird and wacky problems to progress further, which is a nice change from helping girls with their boyfriend troubles in real life. These problems create a nice puzzle aspect to this platformer and force you to actually get your brain working.  To solve people’s problems you have to collect stickers, and use them in an array of interesting ways. You also have to escape agents who want this ‘amazing power’ that is inside your head.

Instead of being one of those easy games that I blast through in an hour, this game actually made me think. So much so that I was tempted to look up a walkthrough, but I resisted the temptation for a helping hand. This was definitely a positive point though, seeing as it gave me a sense of achievement once I had figured out an incredibly hard puzzle. One thing that was good for this type of game is that there were no lives. Sure, if you died you’d respawn at the last Mr Copy machine. But you don’t have to worry about game-overs, or losing all your progress. While others may argue that this makes the game too easy, I think it’s great as it allows you to focus on the amazing story.

The story in this game managed to make me laugh throughout my Stick it to the Man experience. Jokes at the expense of socialnetworkers and depressed people never failed to amuse me, as heartless as that may seem. With an array of characters to help and the ability to read their minds the story is constantly entertaining. Every character is different and special in their own way, especially the ones found in the mental institution! The story was split up into 10 chapters overall, the varied locations meant there was constant fun. Although some chapters may have varied in length, none of them varied in quality as each chapter was as great as the next.

The gameplay was somewhat difficult to figure out at first when it came to mind control. It has the usual jump and move, and used the right trigger with the right analogue stick to control your magical arm. There were multiple ways to read the minds of other people, but I used the gamepad to do it. The idea was that you aim the gamepad at the person’s mind you want to read. However, if you always hold the Wii U gamepad vertically to play, (which I do) then the game switches to this mode while you are trying to run from agents. But this was quickly solved after I got used to the uncomfortable play position.

I also loved the art style in Stick it to the Man, seeing as the scenery and characters were all made out of cardboard and paper. It gave off a Paper Mario vibe, which was definitely a good thing. Another positive was the amazing voice acting all the way through the game. Although all of the actors voiced multiple characters, you still couldn’t tell as they were all so varied from each other. Both of these together gave the game outstanding presentation.

I’m going to give this game 8 out of 10 due to it’s mix of amazing qualities. From the great voice acting and characters to the superb presentation, this game is definitely worth a look! It’s a must for platformer fans with a Wii U.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Wii U code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.