Stick It to the Stickman Anmeldelse (PC)

Stick It to the Stickman is an intrusive thought in the digital flesh, as is it the stick-stapled version of a fleeting desire that passes by at the worst possible moment. It’s the kind of thing that you dream about during the eleventh hour of a should-be eight-hour shift at the office, either beneath a stack of documents or at the water cooler alongside a colleague who you actively despise. It is, quite simply, a game that brings your most relatable, albeit morally questionable side to life in one of the most unusually satisfying ways possible. An office, a corporate infrastructure, a host of shareholders, and the well-overdue flying dragon punch of a restless employee. Naturally, it all adds up to something bizarre, and sure enough, it makes for a totally absurd physics-based rogue-like experience, too. Go figure.

Stick It to the Stickman actively abolishes the notion that you need to patent a revolutionary idea in order to ascend the corporate ladder, as does it sideline the usual nine-to-five grind that most office workers would naturally rely on to earn a monthly paycheck. Instead, it tells you how it is or, for better or worse, how it should be. Simply, it hands you an office job that transcends the usual routine, a stapler, and an opportunity to get a little creative with your work. And when I say creative I mean, fly kick-the-intern-out-of-the-window creative. Because that’s sort of the point here: to depose your colleagues and to increase your shareholder value. It goes a little deeper than that, but you get the gist of it.

A rogue-like game at heart, Stick It to the Stickman onboards you as a fish-out-of-water office worker who, for some reason, has an awful habit of bathing in the paper cuts and bruises of their colleagues. In each run, you begin your journey with a simple desire: to dismantle the corporate hierarchy, and to earn your rightful place on the ladder as the next CEO of The Company. But of course, between you and the chair, you have a whole bunch of problems that go beyond faulty water coolers and the occasional disciplinary hearing. Naturally, everything in The Company hates you, and apparently, the feeling is mutual. Thus, we have our dream of grandeur: to shake a fist or two at the world, and to challenge the corporate elite.

I’d be lying if I said that I had high expectations for a game like Stick It to the Stickman. Because, if we’re being brutally honest, it isn’t all that often that you find a game that blends stick figures with genuinely interesting gameplay mechanics. And yet, this job is surprisingly fun to enroll in, mainly due to the fact that, light visual effects and unoriginal settings aside, it delivers some brilliantly nonsensical action to the fray. Moreover, as it doesn’t belong to the one genre, but rather, a network of areas that cloak multiple stories and game modes, you don’t just have a tongue-in-cheek ragdoll battler, but a surprisingly lofty affair that brings a lot more than a severance package.

Behind its humorous jabs at capitalism, Stick It to the Stickman finds comfort in the arms of a totally absurd button-mashing ragdoll experience. With rogue-like infusions to whet the whistle, the game invites you to carve through various floors of an office building, suit up as one of several archetypes—Intern, Coffee Addict, and so on and so forth—and begin pummeling and demonstrating your brute strength as a jack-of-all-trades of corporate culture.

Unsurprisingly, you can kick, slap, and generally flop and flail around in Stick It to the Stickman, as well as build on your archetype to adopt various skills as the game unravels itself. For example, you can unlock an IT skill that allows you to electrocute your enemies. Similarly, you can use paper airplanes, bombs, and a well-oiled combination of martial arts techniques. Frankly, though, a lot of this isn’t that important, as the gameplay itself primarily consists of mashing buttons and watching the sparks fly. And, if we’re being honest, this is where most of the fun resides: in the simple act of mindlessly hitting prompts and watching on as the world falls to ruin.

Stick It to the Stickman isn’t a game that takes itself too seriously. That said, it is a game that delivers a lot more than a mediocre side-scrolling beat ‘em up gig. With several modes, archetypes, upgrades, and other intricate details—a wanted system in a Grand Theft Auto-like mode, for example—it waxes a lot of areas of interest. In any case I’d say that it wouldn’t work, to marry a rogue-like beat ‘em up with a physics-based ragdoll game. But, as it turns out, it does make for an excellent match. It’s totally bonkers, but that’s exactly what it strives to be.

Fortunately, Stick It to the Stickman doesn’t linger all that long in dubious waters. While it does poke fun at corporate executives and capitalism, at no point does it ever stick around to raise a few eyebrows. Instead, it makes corporate warfare one big joke, and it does all in its power to turn what should be a dull concept into an absolute dreamboat for fledgling combatants. It’s very much the sort of thing that you can easily switch off to at the end of the day. And of course, if there’s one thing that we could all have more of, it’s a chance to act on our wildest desires. Stick It to the Stickman thankfully offers that, and then some.

Verdict

Stick It to the Stickman marries corporate capitalism with unhinged ragdoll chaos to breed a totally absurd, unethically hilarious powerhouse of a beat ‘em up gig that, while still visually light and lacking in flair, is an absolute delight to watch unfold. For better or worse, it’s the kind of severance package that makes dragon punching your colleague in the forehead feel worth the risk. And you can take that up with the overheads.