Excellent graphics but otherwise not that fun.
Actually, I did read one funny comic, I thought it was HILARIOUS, I totally laughed my ass off, but then I read the next panel and the "punchline" totally killed the hilarity of it and ruined the whole thing.
Though what really made me stop trying to read Penny Arcade was when, three months after the comic started, one of the authors made a real marriage proposal to his girlfriend. That is the most idiotic way to make a marriage proposal, but that's not the point of this video game review.
I mentioned before that I found it to be pretty lame that the authors of Penny Arcade placed themselves as the main characters for their own uninteresting comic. Well, now they're the main characters of their own uninteresting video game, presenting themselves as badasses, perhaps as badass as Indiana Jones or The Brothers Grimm or something similar. But they're just not.
Luckily, the player gets to make his own character. I must say I was impressed by how I set my character up in 3D, and then I suddenly saw the same character in a 2D comic. The graphics are pleasing to the eyes in both mediums. The 2D, comic-like cutscenes are well-done and animate great. The 3D environments look just as great, though cel-shading doesn't make things look like a comic book. Most video game developers apparently can't tell.
The narrator is delightful, though they use "disembodied voice" jokes which died about 10 years ago with all the other disembodied voice jokes. The comic cutscenes usually have no spoken dialogue, but that's okay because they're comics so everything pops up in a totally appropriate text bubble.
The game's not nearly as funny as the writers probably think it is, though I did laugh at the "Come, rake, let's go do our dark deeds!" line or however it went.
The story's not all that unique or interesting, but maybe I just say that because of the authors being the main characters. The theme is neat, with Chicago typewriters and overalls abound. Enemies like the robots look cool. I guess it was supposed to be funny that the little robots pelvic thrust constantly, but it's not.
Personally, I find the gameplay to be a bore. ONLY because I don't like turn-based combat in their Final Fantasy ripoff style. Real-time fighting would've been much more fun. Couldn't they rip off of a GOOD game like Secret of Mana? Pressing X to initiate an attack then pressing X again to select the victim gets really repetitive before you even do it for the first time. The combat system makes the other dull RPG elements like leveling up and collecting lots of totally useless items that much worse.
I HEAR the game is really short and doesn't have much depth, which doesn't surprise me as most crappy games like this that have any redeemable features at all (in this case, the graphics, art and animation) are usually really short. I also hear that it lacks depth, which again is pretty predictable, but I wouldn't know because I didn't buy the game.
WHY DIDN'T I BUY THE GAME, you ask? For one, do I look like I have $20 to piss away? I'm not sure how the juveniles that bought this game got $20 and I'm less sure as to why they decided to spend it on this game rather than a college education.
Even if I had money to burn, I wouldn't pay a dime to Penny Arcade (as if they didn't already make more money than they possibly deserve, their minimal charity work is their only redemption), much less $20 for their crappy game which has a dull combat system and apparently isn't very long.
There's so many cool games you could buy through XBOX Live for $20, why would you possibly spend it on this one? Especially because it's not even a whole game! There are going to be several sequel episodes, all probably priced at $20 and all probably just as short as this episode. WOW. Yeah right. Only an idiot or a rich bastard would buy all of them at those prices.
I'm sure people will "disagree with my review" because that will surely teach me my lesson* and I'll suddenly see the world in a whole new light and think that this game is great and their $20 purchases will suddenly be worth it and I'll start giving a crap about what they think. Or maybe none of that will happen and I'll keep on knowing that this game isn't worth having. I've paid less than $20 for lots of awesome XBOX 360 games (look on Gamefly, games like Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 2 & 3 and Splinter Cell: Double Agent are dirt cheap) so it's hard to imagine paying more than I paid for those games to get a game like this Penny Arcade gem.
* It won't.