Octodad: Dadliest Catch

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IamLEAM1983
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Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

More often than now, when we play games, we tend to expect a decent control scheme. We don't want our avatars to flail around – we have shit to get done. We expect exactitude. We demand precision.

Then you start playing QWOP and realize you're having way too much fun watching the Olympics' least-coordinated hurdle runner flail about after a blisteringly difficult half-meter. Suddenly, a game that's insanely hard becomes funny precisely because it's insanely hard.

In the Hopeverse and in D&D's wild and wooly multiverse, humanoid squids have it easy. Four to eight tentacles for a mouth, sure – but they all have humanoid arms and legs. Young Horses, a small developer that managed to strike a deal with Sony based on the strength of its single indie game, likes to posit a different scenario. We all know squids are suspected of being far more clever than they appear to be, but what if their only hope of co-existing with humans involved posing as humans in everyday life?

We have one brain and a dedicated motor center. They have independent cerebral chunks dedicated to each limb, and a small central node. Their methods of thought remain unknown to us, largely because the average octopus brain is so alien in its composition. Fine motor control is something they couldn't manage, not in the way we'd understand it. An octopus excels in the art of making complex movements that are rooted in purely autonomous responses. Anything deliberate requires a little more effort.

This is one octopus' peculiar and hilarious challenge, in Octodad : Dadliest Catch.

You play as the perfect husband, according to his friends and family. You're a devoted partner, a loving father, an ever-patient parental figure – but there's one hitch in the works. You're not human, and nobody in this Stepford-worthy setup notices it. Not even your wife and implausibly human children, who all but idolize you. You're an octopus in a suit, and your greatest challenges rest in replicating everyday tasks. Nevermind that Octodad only speaks in cheerful blubs and blurps, nobody seems to care. You're just that nice.

That's kinda handy, because you're going to wreck your house while trying to do something as simple as pouring yourself a cup of coffee. You'll inadvertantly toss furniture items at your wife and children and they utterly will not budge from their stalwart support and love – even if looking for the TV's remote means you'll accidentally toss the entire fricking couch in your daughter's face.

As you can imagine, this kind of surreal hilarity depends on the deliberately obtuse controls. One trigger controls your left leg (which is actually made up of two tentacles compressed in a pants leg) and another controls your right. The face buttons control your upper limbs, and the joysticks are used to orient the camera and attempt to steer your noodly appendages this way and that. Let go of the “sticky” button mid-motion, and you'll throw whatever it was Dad was holding.

This might be an odd choice for the PS4 indie launch lineup, but it sits nice and pretty on the PC. With a simple art style and a very charismatic and cartoony approach, Octodad comes across as an endlessly patient man full to the brim with determination and dedication, who simply will not back down no matter if flipping burger patties for a summer party should be utterly impossible for his cephalopod self. No matter how hard the task might be, his upper mustache-shaped tentacles always seem to hide a smile. If he's managed to delude his entourage into thinking he's human, then Dad has assuredly managed to delude himself into thinking he's human. There is no challenge which he won't face head-on – from finding his bowtie for his wedding ceremony to finding a way to pose with his family for a summertime backyard picture without knocking the kids halfway across the lawn.

The game really shines when it asks you to do mundane stuff. Put your necktie on for work, the game says. Find the TV's remote for your daughter. Pour yourself a drink. Cook food. Walk the dog.

Then, the game attempts to justify its two-hour running time with the odd emergence of a plotline. Octodad is apparently so clever, so unique in all the octopi in the world, that a world-reknowned chef has made it his goal in life to cook him. The one person in all the world who can see Dad for what he is wants him for sushi – and you'll have to run and hide in order to survive. Stealth sequences are introduced, as are underwater levels where Octodad returns to his natural celerity and agility. Through it all, your goal is to return to your family and find a way to expose the chef for the psychopath he is. The tone remains consistently light-hearted, but slapping stealth as a requirement on top of already hilariously difficult mundane tasks saps some of the fun out of the game. You stop grinning, and start clenching your teeth, wondering when you'll be able to go back to cheerfully trying and failing at going through the particulars of mundane life.

Thankfully, Octodad remains as steadfast as ever. It's hard to stay exasperated when your noodly avatar tries to pull a serious “game face” and to threaten the chef into leaving his family alone – all in determined burbles and gurgles. Shit gets real, yes, but the context of it all remains consistently unreal. It's all very cartoonish, extremely lighthearted, all the while managing to slip in a few Chtulhu Mythos references here and there.

It's just too hard to resent Octodad for the needless stealth sequences when the whole package is so guitlessly stupid, surreal and fun.

Nobody suspects a thing – but I suspect that Octodad's probably overtaken Zoidberg as my favorite fictitious non-Chtulhu and non-Hopeverse squiddly thing.

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