Stick It to the Man Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

The Man ain’t Got Nothing on Me

Video games have been telling the tales of underdogs for years. The people who society has looked down upon, or considered useless, suddenly get some fantastic gift, which makes them capital “S” Special. Naturally, with great power comes great responsibility. Though in Stick It to the Man , Ray’s newfound gift mainly involves tasks like making an invisible friend tea, or stealing a mafia don’s fake teeth for a cabbie whose girlfriend has molar mania.

Stick It to the Man’s Ray is a shlub–he’s a hard hat tester with terrible hair. Sure, he has a decent enough personality and a great girlfriend, but you can tell he’s no prize. That changes when a paper airplane can’t withstand a storm and dumps its precious, mysterious, and possibly even dangerous cargo onto his head. He wakes up in the hospital after, with no explanation of what happened because, of course, his insurance doesn’t cover blows to the head.

In his coma dream, he imagined a pink spaghetti hand popping out of his skull that would let him grapple around his environment, grab stickers, and place them to change the world in order to rearrange items. He also imagined some odd creature saying something about a new host, but it was probably a dream. Except the hand is still there–in the real world–after he removes the bandages. No one else can see it, but he still has all of its unusual abilities and manages to draw some attention.

Ray’s world is made of cardboard construction paper and stickers. Which means a pink spaghetti hand coming out of his head is the perfect tool to navigate and shape the world. Walls to buildings can be ripped down to peek inside. People’s minds can be read to discover what to do in any situation or to spawn powerful stickers. The stickers can completely change a character or item’s abilities or mindset. It works well, and the unique grittiness and handcrafted appearance of the world makes everything seem plausible.

The mind reading, in particular, is a game mechanic that players should employ freely. Though most people don’t have something to directly say to Ray, they’re always thinking in Stick It to the Man . Those thoughts make up some of the best video game dialogue I’ve enjoyed all year. This game is equal parts insightful and clever, not to mention always hilarious. I can’t remember the last time I played a game that, within a span of a few hours, brought up Descartes, Silver Surfer on the NES, the frustration of menial jobs to pay off student loans, bullying, and the meta banality of having to continually jump to get home. It’s brilliant.

What makes an already fantastic script even better is Stick It to the Man’s casting. I didn’t recognize any of the voice actors, but every one was absolutely amazing. I honestly didn’t see that coming. This is an indie game, after all, and you tend to have a certain idea in mind of what to expect from these kinds of casts. Yet, Stick It to the Man’s actors are wonderful, perfectly suited to every situation, and are a joy to hear.

It made me wonder if, perhaps, that’s why the puzzles are so easy. Despite the platformer facade, Stick It to the Man is clearly an adventure game. Only instead of acquiring items and using them in the correct places, Ray is grabbing stickers and slapping them onto people, animals, and items. Acquiring stickers is as easy as listening to all or most of the people in an area. And since only the correct sticker can be applied in its spot, it isn’t as though someone can waste a sticker and lose it. With a little trial and error, anything can be figured out.

Stick It to the Man only stumped me one time, in the third chapter, when a man said his precious pet, Bitey, had crawled in the sewer. I didn’t think to read Bitey’s thoughts, so it took me about ten minutes before I finally went back–saw his brain when I entered the mind reading mode–and realized he didn’t want the chicken his owner was offering. He wanted the sweet taste of human flesh. A quick run to the restaurant, where I flavored a cook’s dish with a brokenhearted man’s salty tears. It turned out the cook was boiling a human arm. Ray snagged it, and Bitey’s meal was ready.

Did that situation sound ridiculous? Well, it’s actually one of the more sane situations. My favorite quest run was in the fourth chapter. The psychiatrist Ray wanted to see had gone to see another psychiatrist, because he was mourning the sudden death of his lobotomist father. Ray needed to give him the chance to speak to his ghostly dad–except, the psychic working at the adjacent circus was busy with the magician and his wife’s ghost. He cut off her legs during their act, and she was quite frustrated, to say the least. She wasn’t going anywhere until she got some legs, so Ray had to go through a circus of characters with similarly strange issues, until he finally got the legs, so he could get the psychic’s magic hat for the other shrink.

Was it complicated? A little, but not overly so. Really, I felt the only difficulty in Stick It to the Man only comes from the platforming elements, and not for the reason that one would suspect. During the third chapter, The Man finds out about Ray, and sends his goons after him. Relatively simple jumps become more difficult, because if Ray enters a mook’s line of sight, he will be chased. If caught, players go back to the last save point. Some enemies can’t be avoided, so instead, Ray must read their minds to make them spawn a distraction sticker. For example, one could get a Zzz sticker, which puts a guard to sleep, or a Ray mask, which will make all the baddies chase after whoever is wearing it.

The main problem stems from the PS3 version’s control scheme. The stickers are applied by holding the right analog stick so the correct surface is selected, then pressing R1. Except, these guards tend to congregate near the thumbtacks (which Ray uses to quickly jump from one point to another), and the analog stick controls are finicky enough, where even the slightest movement can change the target, causing Ray to jump to the spot instead of apply a sticker. Which means redoing the entire scene–reading a guard’s mind, getting a sticker, applying it again–to move on.

Stick It to the Man is a little short–I beat it in one sitting. Once it was done, I didn’t feel any need to return. I might return to the world when the Vita version is released, to see if the touch-screen control scheme makes the experience tighter, but I already know how Ray’s story goes. It was satisfying, yes, but most won’t feel a need to go back again.

Stick It to the Man may be brief and potentially better suited to the Vita, but it is big on charm. It has a distinct visual appeal and characters. So much so that I didn’t mind when the puzzles were a little too easy, the difficulty a tad cheap, and the story short. I had a good time and almost wished I had an invisible, pink, spaghetti arm of my own.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.5 Graphics
Stick It to the Man has a distinct, gritty, and manic look, and looks like a diorama an art student made with cardboard, markers, and stickers. 2.7 Control
The PS3’s analog stick isn’t the most accurate means of applying stickers and navigating Ray’s world. 5.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The theme song is catchy and the casting is pitch perfect. 4.0 Play Value
It’s short and there’s no need to replay it, but that first playthrough will be sufficiently awesome. 4.0 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.