Telekinesis and Telepathy in Stick it to the Man - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 18 June 2013 / 2,928 Views
Alongside the Puppeteer, where characters are made of wood and cloth, there was another, smaller title with a unique visual aesthetic based on materials: Stick it to the Man. It's a game in which all of the characters and objects are two dimensional and stickers play a big role in not only the visuals but also the gameplay. Your character, Ray, has woken up from a coma to find that he now has a weird pink arm coming out of his head that gives him several abilities. Ray can read people's thoughts with this new power, and he can also take ideas from people's heads and transplant them into the real world.
The demo was set in a loony bin, which probably means that Ray's revelations didn't go over well with his loved ones. Flicking the right analog stick at an object you can interact with will grab onto it. If you do this while holding the L or R button you'll read someone's thoughts. So the first thing I did was read the thoughts of my cell's guard, who was apparently really bored with the guard game. Next up I peeled off the wall of the cell next door to reveal a woman who was convinced she was a spider on the hunt. Specifically she was on the hunt for men with a fly face. That doesn't seem to be very common so I took the idea from her head and tossed it on the face of my guard buddy. Result? instant fly man. She took him away to do who knows what and I was free to roam the asylum.
At this point you basically have free reign. There are some orderlies around who will shock you if they see you but you'll just be remade at the nearest printer so it's really no big deal. Moving can be done swiftly using waypoints that appear as thumbtacks tacked into the background. Flick your arm towards them and you'll be instantly transported.
I met a guy talking about what a huge jerk his imaginary friend was and then, after reading his mind, his imaginary friend became a character of its own. He was a giant rabbit with what seemed like a British accent and even after a short time I could kind of tell he was a bit of a butthole. He wanted a spot of tea which was apparently going to require three different items. I found a tea pot but it didn't do anything until I talked to a pyromaniac and took fire from his brain to heat up the water in the tea pot. The bunny already had teabags so I think the only thing I needed after that was a cup to pour it into but I never got the chance.
There's some real potential in this one. Talking to all of the characters was fun, and then reading their thoughts was even more enjoyable. All of it is also well voiced, which is impressive for a smaller game release like this. A representative told me there would be more than 100 characters in the final game. The writing for all these characters is being done by Ryan North of Adventure Time fame so that might be why they were all so fun listen to. It's still early days and incomplete - they're still working on some things like how to choose between two NPC's that are really close to one another - but what I've seen is promising. I'll definitely keep an eye out for this one when it releases on PS3 and PSVita later this year.
