Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 2

The Way That Penny Arcade has transmogrified into the mode of entertainment it's been mocking for the past decade is hardly the road most commonly travelled. The On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness episodes are half point-and-click adventure, half-JRPG combat, and half fruit-fucking nonsense, with everything taking place in a bizarre quasi-Victorian world of Dusty Bin-esque orangeshagging robots, fighting monkey robots and howling mental patients.

That said, it all works really well. The Dickensian trappingsallow Gabe and Tycho's verbose wordplay to settle in nicely, and serves as a fine backdrop for all kinds of cussing and testicle humour. This episode sees you (a self-created, hoe-wielding random - recruited into the ranks of Tycho and Gabe, or beamed over from the last episode) facing off against an evil asylum owner who's refusing to let fruit fucker creator Dr Crazoir out of his facility, and later setting off in pursuit of Fruit Fucker Prime. Seeing as this is an old-school point-and-click at heart, pink flowers and chocolates need finding to persuade an old lady to open a door, a 14mm bolt needs putting in a gold-plating machine, and a rich man needs to be murdered so that you can use his debit card in order to steal a million dollars. All that lovely stuff.

Neo-Victorian Fun

Combat's been tweaked from Episode I but hasn't changed from its FFVII trappings. Your threesome stand opposite a collection of foes and each have three attack circles that consecutively fill up with juice - the first being an inventory of buffs, debuffs and diversionary fruit, the second a basic attack, and the third a mini-game infused super-attack. Time your three heroes' actions and they'll join in on group attacks - whether it be with your hoe, Gabe's shotgun or Tycho's Wolverine mitts. It's a great system and a diversion of equal quality to the rest of the game. The cluttered inventory system is still a pain, but space bar-tapped blocks are now easier to predict and numpties, like myself, can bring the difficulty down should combat become a massacre.

Having banged a drum with 'Do you remember LucasArts when they weren't shit?' etched on it for most of my adult life, Penny Arcade is giving me a warm and glowing sensation. It's not perfect - fighting can get repetitive and the points and clicks don't run as deep as they once did, despite the presence of Ron Gilbert. It is, however, a great reimagining of an obliterated genre. And it's better than Sam & Max. Who don't fuck fruit.