Manual Samuel Review

Sometimes, the control scheme can make or break a game. RTS games would be unlikely to be as popular without the mouse and keyboard and flight simulators might never have been as huge if the flight stick had never been invented. But what about terrible controls, can they be good sometimes? Well, the early Resident Evil games wouldn't have been as terrifying if you didn't keep getting stuck behind bits of scenery, and I'm sure we've all seen the hilarity that is someone trying to get to grips with the controls to Surgeon Simulator.

Manual Samuel is one of those games, like the aforementioned simulation of medical procedures, which hinders you with a questionable control scheme in order to make the game unique. You must move the titular Samuel one leg at a time, whilst making sure that he doesn't forget to breathe and blink. Much like Surgeon Simulator, the complexity of the controls makes tasks that would otherwise be quite menial a lot more difficult. Traversing stairs for example is a huge hazard in Samuel's world, let alone sword fighting with the devil.

It's pretty obvious from the outset that this is a game designed for streamers. The control scheme making the behaviour of the game character unpredictable is what will keep people watching. Seeing Samuel flail about as you try desperately to keep his spine from snapping is pretty amusing and that applies whether you're at the controller or not. The first few times you flip him flat on his face while trying to put on some shoes, it’s hilarious, sadly the joke wears thin after a while and it will get frustrating, especially as the difficulty is ramped up in the later levels.

Don't forget to breathe and stand up, or this happens.

The game certainly doesn’t take itself seriously, with fourth wall breaks and a host of characters who are designed to be as far from reality as possible. Death is imagined as a really awful skateboarder who talks like he thinks he’s in the East Staines Massive. The game employs a Bastion-esque narration system, with a sarcastic “british-voiced” voiceover giving a running commentary of your attempts to get dressed, urinate in a straight line and drive without running over old ladies. This definitely adds to the game, although you may well find it repeating itself a fair bit over the course of the game

Another thing that made me assume that this is a game for the streaming crowd is the length. It’s not an overly long game, I completed it within 4 hours. You can bolster that by attempting to speedrun the levels, if you can meet the challenging time limits. I had a few attempts on the first level and couldn’t even manage to get close to the time required for a bronze medal so I gave that up pretty quickly but I’m sure they’re quite doable if you’re determined enough.

That difficulty is probably my main gripe with the game; the curve is immense. Finishing the game’s story mode doesn’t even begin to prepare you for the speed run mode, which is the only other option. I also found that the difficulty level spiked dramatically at the point of the last boss, who took me the best part of an hour to defeat. What was nice though was that the team clearly realise this spike is here and you have as many attempts at the boss as you want, there are no lives and he doesn’t heal up again after he defeats you so you can just keep chipping away at him.

This is hell. Death looks a little different in this game.

During about 4 hours of playing through the game, it crashed on me 4 times, force closing back to the PS4’s menu, twice during that aforementioned boss fight, losing my progress in the process. This is a bit frustrating but I see the developers are working on it. It’s not what you want to see from a released game though so I’d hope to see a patch issued pretty sharpish.

It looks really nice, with hand drawn style artwork that looks an awful lot like a traditionally animated cartoon. Artist Delia Tomai did a great job here. Credit to the particularly small team behind the game, I’ve seen AAA-titles with less care taken over the aesthetic.

It’s a short but sweet game that does something a little bit unique. It’s unlikely to win any Game of the Year awards and it will only be amusing for so long, but considering it’s a budget priced game, I still felt that I got decent value out of the title. It’s artificially difficult because of the control scheme and it’s not as stable as it ought to be, but it’s fun for a while and it’s always nice to see a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously.