Once Upon a Time…

While there are a lot of battles, the real draw of the game for most people is going to be the story. In fact, we think it's best to characterize the game as something of an interactive Penny Arcade strip… only a lot longer and with a (mostly) coherent theme. Gabe and Tycho work as paranormal detectives, running their own Startling Developments Detective Agency. Gabe tends to be the brawn of the operation while Tycho provides the brains. Your character just comes along for the ride.

If you read the blog entries that go along with the Penny Arcade comic strips, you'll know that Tycho frequently writes long diatribes about random subjects, as well as providing a bit of background for the individual strips. He also laments any form of continuity between strips, and they "try" to avoid such things. One can only wonder at his horror when he began to put pen to paper and create a story that lasts several hours.


The story portions of the game are certainly not revolutionary, but they're the real meat of the game for fans of Penny Arcade. You get to experience the Gabe-Tycho-Other dynamic that shows up in the webcomic, and some of the comments are sure to induce real laughter - unless of course you hate the comic and all things gaming, like Jack Thompson.


Conversations are your typical "multiple-choice" trees, but with few exceptions they are strictly linear. You can ask for further clarification, and sometimes you'll be given several options - i.e. why are you interested in the giant robot, Tycho wants to know, at which point you get to choose an appropriate response - but other than fleshing out the story somewhat there is no consequence to your choices. We were a little disappointed at this, as we expected at least some difference in response to some of the choices.


It's not strictly part of the storytelling, but there's also interaction with your surroundings. In standard adventure game fashion, you can click around on various objects in the environment to get text descriptions. Unlike the conversations, the descriptions generally aren't all that humorous, but there is a mini game of sorts here as you can find hidden artwork and music that you can listen to back at the Startling Developments office. Find them all, and you even unlock a secret Penny Arcade comic.

The simple summary of the story and gameplay is that it's entertaining for roughly the duration of the game. You can play through it again, but it's not as good the second time around… rather like reading and rereading the same comic strip. Once you know the punch line, it's not as funny. I've purchased Penny Arcade books for about the same price as the game, and they provide about the same amount of entertainment. That's coming from a fan of their work, of course, so adjust your expectations as appropriate.

Fighting the Good Fight Performance Analysis
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  • PrinceGaz - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    Even if there isn't the option to turn off AA in-game, couldn't it be forced off in the graphics driver settings? I've never used IGP solutions, but I'd expect those from nVidia and AMD/ATI have very similar driver settings to those of their discrete graphics-cards.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    I'm not sure what others do to get these "forced" settings to work, but I've encountered quite a few games where regardless of what you set in the control panel, you end up with the in-game setting. Assassin's Creed didn't let me enable AA at higher resolutions, and in a quick test just now forcing AA off in Precipice didn't turn it off. Depending on how the AA is being done, it may not be something that the graphics driver handles directly. (Besides, I figure most people with IGP solutions are running Intel stuff, and I don't recall ever seeing the option to manually set AA there.)
  • Houdani - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    [quote](Ed: Hey, we're a family website. Penny Arcade can throw around all the cuss words they want, but we do our best to avoid dropping the F-bomb in our articles.)[/quote]
    I snicker that you would pointedly avoid typing the F-bomb, but turn around and link a screenshot of the (clearly identified) Fruit F*er on the same page. Haw!
  • camaris - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    I think you mean
    Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins

  • JarredWalton - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    Grr.... I swear I had that right too, but I must have switched it without thinking. I've met the two in person up in Seattle before (and I've even got signed PA books to prove it). Anyway, I've fixed the reversal.
  • ImmortalZ - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    Sorry to say that you are wrong about that.

    Precipice was released on the scene on May 22nd, 2008.
  • ViRGE - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    Except that it apparently doesn't work right, supposedly the game logic of that release was all screwed up making the game play out of order.

    Anyhow, it's a fun game, but $20 was a bit too much.
  • ImmortalZ - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    Then get the fix :P
  • JarredWalton - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link

    I'll leave confirming whether or not the "fix" works to others... at least some of the comments I've seen indicate it still has issues, and besides I'm not in support of piracy.
  • ViRGE - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - link

    Judging from the people complaining in the usual places, it sounds like the fix doesn't work. So no, it hasn't been completely and correctly cracked from the looks of things.

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