Randal's Monday Review (PC)

The point-and-click adventure game has witnessed a resurgence as of late, and fans of the genre can once again enjoy a vast number of titles, after a rather prolonged period when such games stepped out of the spotlight.

This is mainly due to a handful of developers and publishers that persevered through the years and are now enjoying a lot more publicity, making gamers at large more aware of the plethora of adventure games available.

One such publisher is Daedalic Entertainent, who now brings Nexus Game Studios' Randal's Monday into the limelight.

Randal's Monday is not your typical point-and-click adventure game, as it attempts to fit a rather crazy odyssey in an utterly mundane setting, while at the same time cramming in every piece of geek culture reference possible into every nook and cranny.

Some of the lines really are funny

Story

You play the role of a kleptomaniacal sociopath who steals an engagement ring from his best friend and then gets into all sorts of crazy antics, as he realizes that the ring is cursed.

His friend had procured the ring from a homeless man, trading a Dorito for it, and now that man is the only one who can make sense of the entire situation, as Randal keeps reliving the same day over and over again, with the repercussions of his actions carrying over from one version of reality to the next.

Of course, the bum speaks like a crossbreed between Yoda, Deepak Chopra and the Wizard of Oz, doing a kind of stereotypical one-size-fits-all introduction to all known self-fueled disaster movies and books whenever you talk to him, foreshadowing the grim events that your false hopes triggered into the future.

This means that you're pretty much in the dark most of the time, as the high-stakes plot slowly gives way to a mundane experience where you're playing MacGyver trying to assemble pointless trinkets from household fluff instead of going to the store and buying the actual tool you need.

However, being in the dark is not always a bad thing, as the game is not about getting things done but about expressing the fact that "Clerks" and "The Big Lebowski" were too short, and that they needed more dialogue.

I see what you did there

Gameplay

The protagonist is a snarky and obnoxious moocher, a man that nobody would like to play as. People are usually lazy cowards in their daily lives and we step into the shoes of various heroes in video games in order to feel better about ourselves.

In this case, Randal makes us feel that by being much worse than anyone could imagine. A horrible human being whom you would want to cram into a locker, pour gasoline on, and set on fire.

You would then proceed to roast marshmallows and feel all warm and fuzzy inside, due to the fact that you, as a productive and responsible member of society, got rid of the unproductive beggar that sponged off the hard work of those who know how to extract value from their environment through their own effort.

“Music, movies, video games, television series, everything from the '70s onward makes an appearance in Randal's Monday, either through jokes or various Easter Eggs, scattered throughout almost every game screen.”

Ayn Rand's works aside, this is the general tone of the game, not merely content to shower you in various pop culture references but doing its best to completely overwhelm you and to point to each and every one of them screaming, making sure that you notice them all.

Playing it is like watching a movie made out of lines from other movies, patched together like some sort of self-referential meta-culture Frankenstein's monster that busts into your home much like Kramer used to enter his neighbor's apartment, in a lively, but ultimately untimely, loud and annoying manner.

This pretty much sums up the game. You run around, doing an insane amount of talking with the various characters in its world, and banging your head against the wall while trying to figure out a plethora of illogical and contrived puzzles.

Fortunately, the game has a walkthrough option right in the menu, giving you progressive hints until it spoils everything that you must do.

Make no mistake, making use of that system greatly improves the gameplay experience, as you'll be able to actually achieve progress, instead of merely accumulating frustration.

... said no one ever

The game has, I think, the highest density of pop culture references per minute of gameplay ever seen in anything, anywhere. Music, movies, video games, television series, everything from the '70s onward makes an appearance in Randal's Monday, either through jokes or various Easter Eggs, scattered throughout almost every game screen.

The problem with this is that, although the offbeat writing could have worked by itself, the constant assault of superfluous elements is literally beating your will to death and - even worse - becoming boring, after a couple of hours with the game.

There's a ton of dark humor, and the voice acting is surprisingly good, especially when taking into account the sheer volume of text. That contributes a lot to the dialogues and makes them much easier to stomach, which goes a long way to making the entire game more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the constant irreverent snark and all the references get really old, really fast, especially since there is none of the frustration for life's pedestrian essence and effervescent passion exhibited by pop culture-obsessed legendary geeks such as Quentin Tarantino, nor the pure evil boredom-induced antisocial activity of a true sociopath, as you don't actually hurt people.

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You're just playing the role of a whiny cowardly douchebag, which is really anticlimactic. You don't manipulate anyone into doing anything unsavory, aside from the usual sleight of hand used by adventure games.

In addition to this, you're required to backtrack a lot, and if you decide not to use the hint system, well, good luck, you're really going to need it.

Most of the puzzles require you to make small steps that don't really have a satisfying result, especially since there is almost no logic (whoever put a wire in a blender in order to create a lockpick raise their hand).

The backtracking by itself would not be as bad, as there's a sort of overworld map of the metro helping you get around town, but the loading times tend to add up when you only have to visit a location in order to interact with a single item, after which you have to go somewhere else.

The visuals are pretty solid, with the cartoonish appearance fitting the silly overall tone, and with everything drawn pretty well, sharp and with a lot of attention to detail.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion