REVIEW

Stick it to The Man! Nintendo Switch Review

by Jake Stewart, December 8th, 2017

I was initially surprised when I saw Stick it to the Man was coming to the Nintendo Switch eShop. The art style made it stand out drastically from the other games on the marketplace. Not only did it stand out oddly, it truly is an ugly game. Not ugly as in completely unappealing, but more so that the character’s designs are truly off-putting and strange. It doesn’t take long for that eerie art style to grow on you however, within the first level I found myself loving the gross looking characters, cardboard backgrounds, and dark atmosphere.

Stick it to the Man tells the story of Ray, a hardhat tester who is the victim of a strange accident and gains the power to read minds and manipulate the world around him. This power comes in the form of a “giant pink spaghetti arm” sticking out of his head. A mysterious group of men are seeking Ray after the accident, and the game follows his wacky adventures around town while he avoids capture.

Stick it to the Man takes the form of puzzle game, with some point and click aspects. Each level has an overall story to tell. Through the process of reading minds, Ray can resolve the townspeople’s issues as well as his own. In standard point and click style, items can be picked up and brought to different NPCs using the spaghetti arm. After helping one NPC, they usually change the environment or present a new item to bring to another NPC and so on.

There isn’t a whole lot of gameplay in Stick it to the Man so to speak. Most of your time playing the game won’t be spent platforming, solving puzzles, or completing quests, it will be listening to the internal monologues of everyone in town. Luckily, the game’s twisted and dark humor makes almost every single one of these enjoyable. Each level includes at least a dozen different minds to read, whose thoughts will change as you complete tasks in the area.

I personally didn’t find much for difficulty in Stick it to the Man. Most of the puzzles don’t require much digging to uncover the next piece, and can be discovered simply by wandering around or listening to nearby minds. There are some short platforming sections where you must avoid pursuing men in suits, but most of these situations are short and require just a little bit of navigation to get around them.

As most of your experience is spent listening to minds, there is a LOT of voice acting in this game. Every single voice fits their character very well, and the quality of the VAs is on par or better than you’d hear in most AAA experiences. The audio and quality of the voices is edited very well, and the actor’s performances are always fantastic and overflowing with character. From Ray’s slow dopey attitude, shifty therapists and depressed teens, every actor nails their role. Stick it to the Man easily has the best voice acting work that I’ve heard in an indie game for a long time.

As mentioned, Stick it to the Man has a surprisingly dark sense of humor. In the first level, Ray is trying to find a ride back home after his strange accident and stumbles upon a man standing atop a car, with a noose around his neck. This man then requests Ray to release the parking break, and assist him in his suicide. His reason for wanting to die? His girlfriend left him for an older man with nicer teeth. The main objective of this level becomes obtaining the teeth from the older man, so the driver will stop trying to kill himself and give Ray a ride home.

The entire game is PACKED with morbid scenarios, off-putting characters, and bizarre situations and that is where it truly shines. What Stick it to the Man lacks in gameplay, it very much so makes up in humor and atmosphere. Levels are dark and brooding, while the soundtrack is filled with fitting jazz beats. Backdrops are made of cardboard, characters are made of paper, items are stickers slapped on the walls, every aspect of Stick it to the Man seems well thought-out and created to fit the world. This game is overflowing with charm and character, and is almost worth the price of entry for that alone.

Towards the end, gameplay can feel somewhat repetitive unfortunately. The experience is surprisingly short, ranging only about three hours or so, but towards the end of it the humor can start to lose its punch. While it is so short, the repetitive nature of the game encourages short bursts of playing, and taking a break after every level may make your time more enjoyable. Since the dialogue doesn’t change, and the puzzles are always the same, there really isn’t any replay value either.

As for the Switch aspects of the game, everything seems to run and behave as perfect as can be. While the game isn’t intensive by any means, I didn’t experience any frame-rate drops, any hiccups, or really any glitches whatsoever. Stick it to the Man fits very well as a handheld title, so I’m glad that I got to experience it on the Switch. While it’s been on many different platforms in the past, I truly believe that the nature and style of the game fit well on a Nintendo console, especially a handheld one.

In the end, if you take Stick it to the Man at face value, and enjoy the short, sweet, and even a little bit repetitive journey that it is, you’ll find a very worthwhile experience. The characters and the world all behave so differently that it creates a truly uncommon journey. The art style mixed with the funky jazz conceive a setting very twisted, but unique in nature. If you haven’t had the chance to try Stick it to the Man yet, I absolutely recommend it. The short but satisfying adventure is one so unique, that you won’t soon forget it.