POSTED 25/4/14


OCTODAD: DADLIEST CATCH

Young Horses

We couldn’t help it. ‘Macho Man’ reinvented as “Octo, Octodad. Splorp gleeble blompf, schlorp Octodad” was all that was earworming us...

...and now it’s earworming you too. Sorry about that Chief... and Cop, Construction Worker, Cowboy...

With that puntastic title you might be expecting something silly here. You’d be right. You are the titular Octodad. You’re happily married (well, after the intro), you have two sweet little kiddiewinks (a girlie one and a boyish one, of course), you’re a slave to corporate oppression (an obsession with neckties is truly worrying) and you’re living a sweet suburban life. Oh, you’re also a cephalopod mollusc.

That’s “octopus” for those who didn’t just assail Wikipedia like we did.

The key conceit is that nobody realises that you’re of the octo-persuasion – save for the odd Gladys Kravitz type. As such you have to maintain a certain amount of stealth in your little boxy housing estate utopia as you go about such mundanities as weeding, barbecuing, shopping, brewing coffee and generally living. This would be easy, save for all of your flappety-flipper floppy bits. But Octodad has a saviour – you.

As such you’re tasked with controlling two “hands” and two “legs” individually, with another button allowing the picking up and putting down of stuff, and this is where our consternation kicks in. It’s anything but intuitive. Actually, it’s truly fucking insanity-inducing. Of course perseverance yields results, but we have to question how many will get past the “what the fuck do you bastards want from me?!” stage, and experience the delights beyond. Kick it into co-op mode and chaos reigns reignier.

It’s a shame, for this puzzle/adventure sees much classic slapstick abound – albeit some of it due to those flibbety controls - and a sweet story of one ma- erm, octopus - just trying to make it in today’s world is there for the octo-curious.

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