Thimbleweed Park Review "Buy, Wait for Sale, Rent, Never Touch?"

sup everybody this is character thay see Gina is always it to my continuing mission to bring you reviews that aren't two minutes long or filled a sponsored bullcrap what happens when you take a point click adventure mix in elements of the x-files Twin Peaks and what could only be described as Krusty the clown's older brother the family doesn't talk about during Christmas holidays that's right you get symbol we'd park a Ron Gilbert and Gary winix point-and-click adventure that has finally kicked its way out into stores with its big clown shoes size 11 but as we all know just getting here is half the battle let's see if these two old grog nerds who started back when point-and-click adventure games ran on monochrome monitors have what it takes to bring the magic of ancient point-and-click classics like secret of monkey island day of the tentacle and maniac mansion into the future or if it's all just pass them by as always if you liked the video maybe subscribe so here's my review for thimble weed park microwave safety videos the horrors of clown debt and bedrooms of terror episode 5 graphics are up first I mean when you sit down for this you have to know that it's a point and click game which means it's going to look a very particular way now that's a way that some gamer is going to look at and think ah this makes sense this is here to remind me of what I never want to go back to while other gamers are going to look at the title sit back with a nice warm feeling because thimble we'd park is anything if it's a digital hug from a long-lost friend what works so well for me and is instantly noticeable symbol we park is a combination of unique movement across sprawling locations that all have multiple complex puzzles I mean it the first time you go care ask them across a graveyard soiled environment and realize you just crossed like three entire game screens packed to the gills with dead bodies buried under their last birthday cards chiseled in stone it's actually pretty goddamn epic and while not all of the locations are like this most are indeed large and complex environments Criss crossing graveyards multi-tiered levels and hotels replete with an assortment of room activities and optional stuff yes you heard that right optional activities and puzzles that can be taken care of which I'm going to get to in a second now color work here is also very well done and even with a large library of locations to explore with your assorted team members every place feels somewhat unique either due to excellent planning in the color palette or within the architectural designs of their base structures now there is some backtracking here whether you're boxing around the inner workings of mysterious subterranean complexes or trying to get the world's for steampunk and vacuum tube powered printer to work or if you're feeding magic mushrooms questionable magician every single location is interesting enough or changed up enough that revisiting them makes sense here now that doesn't mean the game is perfect because it's not movement across the levels can be hampered by this complexity that I spoke of and though you can double click to speed up your pixelated little people pedaling at light speed across the levels sometimes they can get a little bit confused about what you want them to do which means they can run back then double back then run forward then double back then run back and double back and then run forward again like a goddamn target in the circus turkey shoot luckily there aren't a ton of environments that allow for this but you will notice it here and there as expected the game also ran perfectly without crashes or issues on anything from the high end test PC to the low end with an i3 and a 680 as a complete package while thimble we part may not wow its graphical prowess what it does is it offers unique strengths where it can and very few weaknesses and there's this unmistakable feeling of mischievousness in almost every single spot you encounter sound music and voice [Music] yeah looks like we need to go talk to the rest of the weirdos that live in this town we should split up it will be faster you cooling your heels in the local diner would also make things go faster if we follow agency questioning protocol this shouldn't take long plus $138 in interest ran up am I gonna get that kind of dough I have a show to do 138 bucks in interest you loan shot and of course when it comes to audio sound is always up first now unlike most games where action leads to reaction at the business side of a gun barrel with a caliber that ends in for much of the sound in point-and-click adventures is more subtle listening this almost strange pop and stop style of sound effect rhythm that occurs within them movement and action separated by large amounts of environmental blanket and I have to say it's this brilliance here in the blanket of environmental sounds is where thimble weed Park earns its altered namesake like too thick tonal layers in the very last location of the game as you complete the last bit of a puzzle or crickets call out in front of dreary neon soaked cafes the game may not have an extraordinary amount of action playing out and when it does it's mostly average but it easily makes up for that with a great deal of environmental excellence lastly I have to say Bravo for the separation effects at work here with situations playing out across the sound stage fading right and left perfectly it's surprising how often you'll play a point and click game that doesn't do that but instead treats the entire screen is some kind of strange mono speaker in a way overall I'd say the sounds are good to average but with some stellar environmental elements music so this is mostly excellent with somber electronic themes playing out in sheriff stations too noir style guitar-driven elements in others and I really liked that it added a great deal of tension in some of those locations and throughout each of the spaces you play the tracks do an excellent job adding just a little bit of emotion sadly there are a couple oddball here for example the consistent circus gone wrong music tracks that play out a couple thematically connected areas for one character are sort of grading it just doesn't fit as well as the rest and instead of adding to the elements of theme and emotion in the environment it sort of doubles up on the attitude you already see visually as a package it actually is pretty good music it's just I wish that in some locations they went with a bit more subtle and of course that brings us to voice now I liked a great deal of the work here especially folks like Agent Ray who is basically Dana Scully with a cold storage shed where her heart should be dealing out sarcastic biting one-liners and emotional dead drops in various sentences throughout or ransom the bleeping clown one part tragic tale of a bachelor gone wrong one part long-haul trucker this dude smashes through the game like a verbal semi-truck whose tires have been replaced by squeaky clown shoes just absolutely taking the piss out of everything anything and anyone in the game and I get it character is key unfortunately that over-the-top mentality especially in randoms case leads to a bit of imbalance here you see the stronger personalities sometimes good and sometimes bad in timbal we'd Park aren't matched with ground and characters on the opposite side there's an unbalanced feel here for example the other agent a man named Reyes speaks with the subtle grace of someone more in lockstep and sock garters than an investigator of any kind it doesn't really come across interesting at all compared to agent ray or Dolores the strangely apt but spunky computer game programmer add to that the unbalanced pedestrian voice directions which can result in the occasional moment where you can almost hear the voice actor thinking to themselves how much they're going to make for saying that particular line altogether I'd say it's pretty good voice but it can feel totally uneven and of course all this brings us to gameplay and a bit about the story of Simba we'd park or as I like to call it the mysterious case of why no one gives a the game starts out with you agent Ray and Ray is at the scene of a crime a man's murdered in his body is left in a creek and from that point on your normal part and parcel would be to click like a goddamn madman all over the game world trying to find out who killed this person and why but almost instantly a couple things become very noticeable one is the game scale at times it can feel absolutely enormous from long drawn-out walks down various side streets to locations having different upper and lower levels with puzzle stretching across them two huge phone books with hundreds of numbers you can call from city businesses to hints to Kickstarter backer recordings this easily feels like the largest point-and-click adventure game in just pure scope that I've played in a long time now the second thing you're going to notice is absolutely no one really gives a this dude's is dead oh sure they pretend they do but overall not really the agents truck around the creek ignoring the fact that this dude is basically fouling everyone's water supply like a human Frakker I mean it if this is a reflection of law enforcement I can only assume the world is like friggin Bartertown in Mad Max but really that lethargy and possible side mode of manipulation actually played to excellent effect here in the twisting story which I won't ruin other than to say everyone has secrets no one's there for the reasons you think and ransom the clown is most likely a manifestation of the God of rage now the last thing you'll probably pick up on this game is the Lord your stable of characters you can play as within just a small amount of time you'll be branching out from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and maybe even more playable characters with you mixing and matching items across them in various locations to complete some of the puzzles throughout inba we'd park let's jump to puzzles for a second because in this game they're a bit different you can choose easy or hard mode what that does is adds complexity more locations of the game world if you choose hard and also ups the puzzle scope in easy mode this might take you 8 to 10 hours and has a nice overall slope of puzzles across the environments hard mode is at least to me though one of the most in-depth puzzle titles I've played in years and is going to add a number of hours to that playtime and really that playtime is just incredibly varied 1 second you're leading cops to false leads to open up avenues of gameplay for another character to sneak into a location and do ultimately underhanded things and the next you're interrogating why knows about the kerbside lifestyle and then a moment later you're eating questionable meat from unclean cafes only to reenact that moment in team america world please wear a puppet turns into Linda Blair from The Exorcist and of course to finish all that off you're doing this across the game world that's incredibly wide and over all terrain covered in fact more than half way through thimble we park I was stunned to find more and more locations all being available to me Denver we park really offers this incredible depth and scope for a point and click adventure and while it does run afoul of a couple of the genres weaknesses it's few and far in between and really surprising in that fact fun factor now I have to say if there's one thing this game is it is fun the game just grabs you and I get it this might be too much for some folks because some puzzles have you not only figuring out what's going on in one characters location but also performing other actions to help that character move forward and sometimes it feels like you're playing 3d chess from Star Trek but to me that's simply the magic here could this have been made without Kickstarter I don't know but it certainly feels like something has changed not only are items usable but people are as well and who has what when and where can matter and while it never really leaves you at a dead end it can stretch your brain a bit to try to overcome the narrative threads that might stop one character from doing something in an area that another could also my hats off to these guys it's rare and a point and click game to have optional side activities we all know the feeling you'll walk into a room basically plunder like the good pirate fondle tickles you rub grab touch push and pull every goddamned item in every room in the game world to figure out if you can use them but in thimble we'd there are a couple completely optional puzzles and it really worked to make the game world feel just a bit more alive unfortunately I can't say this game comes away unscathed even as everything wrapped up I felt the energy oak of detached care that many of the characters had made their connections sort of transitory to one another and either I didn't care about their indian story bits or if i did it wasn't explained very well the fact is at times thimble weed feels like there are some parts of the plot left a little bit unfinished and yes that's even when you beat the game and there's an attempt to somewhat alleviate that concern with what can only be described as a magic trick where someone says look over there and then runs away I guess I'll just say this the game doesn't have a bad ending at all but it does have a unique enough one that I think there's going to be a lot of discussion about it so as you guys know I rate games on a by weight for sale rent or never touch it again rating scale this is absolutely a Buy it's not perfect but the game has wicked puzzles an incredibly large world two different difficulty levels with change up the game and honestly relies much less on random items and more on smart use of characters and items and once again a couple little optional things that you can do really set it off for me so as always if you liked the video give it a thumbs up maybe check out Twitter or patron that is how I continue to give you these reviews if you dislike the video give it a thumbs down peace out enjoy the rest of your week

Channel: undefined

Views: 68,163

Rating: 4.8667312 out of 5

Keywords: angrycentaurgaming, angryreview, ACG, angry, centaur, gaming, switch, preview, review, Thimbleweed Park Review, Thimbleweed Park game Review, Thimbleweed Park pc Review, thimbleweed park, thimbleweed, thimbleweed park switch review, thimbleweed park ps4 review, thimbleweed park xbox one review

Id: Uevocc9mTGg

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/juliankennedy23]

Excellent review. Love the full coverage for a game that often would not receive it in a genre that is at best mentioned not reviewed.

That said the beginning of your review brought out my inner Comic Book Guy. I can assure you that Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky AKA Krusty the Clown son of Rachel and Hyman would be celebrating Hanukkah not Christmas holidays.

Greatly enjoy your reviews and thank you for the solid work week in and out.