Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode Two Preview

PAX 2008 Preview

Back in May, gamers and Penny Arcade fans were treated to Penny Arcade Adventures, a fun downloadable RPG title that allowed players to play through a fun and clever story in the universe of everyone’s favorite webcomic, Penny Arcade. Now, developer Hothead Games is readying their follow-up to the original, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2.

Episode 2 will keep the narrative very similar to the first episode, continuing the storyline while offering up some improvements to the original’s gameplay. The fantastic sense of humor from the first game is also kept intact in the follow-up, effectively capturing the wit of the popular web comic. Make no mistake, fans of the original Penny Arcade Adventures will want to check this one out.

Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2 begins where the original game left off, with Gabe and Tycho trying to clean their lives up after the events of the first game and still trying to fight off the nefarious Fruit-****ers. Just as in the original, you’ll begin the adventure by making your avatar through the game’s character creator. If you have a character from the first Penny Arcade Adventures episode, they will automatically be detected and carried over to the new episode, complete their experience intact.

There are a few new additions to the three main protagonists. Gabe and Tycho will each feature a new set of weapons, as Gabe will now have attachments for his hands when he punches, Tycho will have a shotgun as opposed to the Tommy Gun in the previous game, and your custom avatar will have new garden tools with which to defeat your foes.

The staff at Hothead Games has been listening to their fans when it comes to requested improvements for the game, and really took a lot of the suggestions to heart when developing Episode 2. Whereas the original game featured some rudimentary puzzles here and there, the new game will have more complex puzzles throughout, which promise to be more satisfying than before.

Combat has also been updated a bit to keep things fresh. Special moves have also been updated to be more fun and challenging, as the mini-games have been made to require faster fingers and reflexes in order to build up the strongest moves. Blocking is also a lot more intuitive and easier to pull off, thanks to more prominent indicators on the screen. All in all, Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2 is shaping up quite nicely, bringing in more fun story elements and enough improvements over the original to make it a worthy investment for fans of the comic and of the original game.

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