If you had an extra ten hours to do whatever you wanted, what would you do? Spend some extra time with the kiddos? Maybe catch up on a season of that popular TV show you fell behind on? How about read random comments and thoughts on the internet? If the last one sounds like your best option, Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure, a point and click adventure by one man dev COWCAT may be the perfect game for you.
The game follows antiquities dealer Bjorn Thonen the day after receiving a mysterious phone call notifying him of impending danger. Brushing it off as a prank caller, he is later robbed and tasked with solving who did it and why it had to be him. You’ll spend the next ten hours (or however long you can stomach) painfully pointing and clicking your way through the story, interacting with a few supporting characters and the game’s world. While there are some puzzles, they primarily focus on trading items or selecting the right item at the right time, rarely requiring more brainpower than a high school dropout huffing whip-its behind a dumpster. Luckily the controls are well suited for console, as they are fluid, responsive, and move at a decent speed, which can be a downfall in the PC to console conversion of the genre.
If mediocre puzzle solving isn’t your thing, you will have the childish humor to fall back on. I found the early fart and porn jokes to be chuckle worthy, but this became nerve racking early on, growing stale within the first hour and only going downhill from there. You can only laugh at how big of a loser/slob Bjorn is so many times before it becomes clear he’s simply an unlikable, one note protagonist. Maybe this was my fault due to pushing the toilet humor slider (yes, that’s a thing) to the max, but the same jokes running on and on reminded me of the fat kid in school who would make jokes about his own weight in an effort to be funny, resulting in a monochromatic show that never hit its stride. When you take into account that the majority of the gags have already been pulled off to greater success in other movies or shows, the journey becomes a bit of a slog.
If the poorly written jokes were not enough to turn you off, the never ending barrage of comments and dialogue that you are required to read will make you run in terror. With absolutely no voiceovers being present, you will spend the entirety of the game reading the often boring banter (seriously, most of the jokes feel like stuff that was left on South Park‘s cutting room floor) or violently pressing X to skip the text, which can stunt progress since you’ll often need the commentary to provide direction on what you should do next. It’s a double edged sword that never gets better since Bjorn finds it necessary to comment on each and every thing you click on within the game world, which is a staple of the genre. I’ve honestly found perusing Facebook comments on any random article to be more entertaining and about as poorly dictated. In place of voiceovers there is a never ending stream of questionably upbeat music which doesn’t properly match the tone of the game; in my case it was promptly muted as it had me on the verge of going on a Hotline Miami-esque rampage.
The comic book inspired presentation is the one area that doesn’t fail to meet expectations. The bright colors and thick outlines combined with the transitions between panels make this feel like it was adapted from an indie comic book. The character design adds to this, with stylized characters that look like they would easily fit into the world of the Penny Arcade comics/games. I would love to see more of the design, but with everything else built around it by a larger team focusing on the other nuances that this never hits the mark on.
If you have an extra ten hours to spare and enjoy mediocre writing with copious amounts of recycled toilet humor, Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure is the game for you. If that doesn’t sound like it would be of interest to you, I would avoid this like the plague, much like reading the comments on anything you post on the internet for the general public to see.
4 out of 10
Pros
- Comic Book Inspired Visuals
- Some Funny Low Brow Humor
- Intuitive Console Controls
Cons
- Too Much Dialogue
- Music Is Obnoxious
- Many Jokes Fall Flat
- Poorly Written One Note Characters
Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure was developed and published by COWCAT. The game is available on iOS, PC, PS4, PS Vita, X1, and will be on NS December 3rd, 2018. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure, check out the official site.
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