Disclaimer: Wow. I can’t remember the last time I wrote anything this long about a game… and this isn’t even long. Or good.

I spent a good few hours (too many, perhaps) this past weekend playing the new Xbox Live Arcade* game Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and have just wrapped up the story this evening.

The game is being released in episode form (think Sam & Max) so the first edition is short, clocking in at probably six hours or so. The environments are limited, but the game does pack a fair bit of action into its two major settings. The questing is fairly standard adventure/RPG stuff; you’ll trek around gathering clues, smashing open crates for items, fighting baddies and gaining experience and levels and such. Nothing too exciting or revolutionary here but for this type of game it gets the job done.

What does make PAA: OTRSPOD (cripes) worth playing though is the trademark Penny Arcade humour and, most impressively, the battle system.

The battles are probably best described as Final Fantasy with action timers. Essentially, once an action is performed there is a cool down period before you can use another action, and each character in your party has their own set of timers. The timer for item use fills up more quickly than the attack function, and the special attack fills up more slowly again. Additionally, you are able to block incoming attacks by timing a button when the enemy strikes; so you’re required to think about several things at once and the system really does work very, very well.

The enemies are limited but each has its own humourous charm: you’ll fight drunken hobos, fruit… err… fornicators, clowns, mimes and even barbershop quartets. Each enemy has its own strengths and weaknesses which add a bit of planning strategy.

Graphically, it’s exactly what you’d expect. Pre-rendered scenes and cartoon characters. The cut scenes are in the style of the comic strip and there’s speech bubbles all over the place. It works.

The humour translates pretty well from the strip too. Thankfully the creators didn’t try to do voiceovers for Gabe and Tycho, so everything funny is in text form and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s a little hit and miss at times but nothing is cringeworthy and there’s a lot of cleverness overall.

So then, it’s certainly worth a look if you’re a fan of the comic - and even if you’re not you’ll probably enjoy the battle system. Good stuff and an impressive first offering.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness can be purchased online for PC platforms from Greenhouse, whilst the Xbox version can be found in the Xbox Live Marketplace. No word on a retail version as yet.

* The game has also released for Windows, Linux and Mac; I chose Xbox over Windows for the achievement factor.