The Company Man - Review
If you have ever worked in the corporate space, offices with fluorescent lights, people microwaving fish for lunch and a host of other issues will either enrage you, or make you laugh. The Company Man takes an approach to the metroidvania, that no-one else has before, letting you beat upon your office compatriots. But is this one solid release, or something that HR need to be involved with?
The story that The Company Man tells is very light, it has enough to push you forward, but there is no real depth to any of the characters that you meet, or connect with, that should you forget one of them, nothing really changes. You play as Jim, who on his first day at his new job at Good Water, spends a bit too much time daydreaming and gets confused when listening to his new co-worker, which in turn has him breaking equipment and being demoted. His reason for getting the job was that as a child, he loved playing games with his dad, but that was because his father couldn’t get a job and as it put a strain on the marriage, his mother left them and got together with the CEO of Good Water. There is also an unrequited love story, corporate sabotage, public disinformation and more going on, again none of it is explained in detail, but it does end in a somewhat satisfying manner, so you won’t be left hanging.
Where the game shines is with the gameplay, earlier I called it a metroidvania game and while you can apply that term to it, it really isn’t quite accurate. Sure, there are some exploration moments and you can revisit old locations, but the way in which you level up, doesn’t restrict you from progressing, if you don’t explore. The gameplay is mostly laid out in a linear fashion, there is some exploration, usually to provide extra coins, but not exploring won’t hurt you in the long run. What you need to consider is that the game plays out the same in each location, Jim has a special Keyswoard, which is a keyboard that is also a sword, that he can use to attack those who get in his way. After the first boss is defeated, a member of the board of directors will appear and train Jim in the art of replying to an email, which in the game means you can now shoot at enemies from a distance. As you progress further in the game, you will unlock more powerful or alternate firing modes for your email abilities, reply all, cc and even spam emails, which can be useful when dealing with some of the later game enemies, but for the most part you won’t need to worry about using it.
A lot of the combat revolves around attempting to discover which enemy does what and then getting in and attacking, some of the earlier enemies are pretty simple, usually just walking around, but as you get into the higher floors of the building, folks become more of a challenge. Where it all comes together is in the boss fights, some of them are pretty basic, just dodge the attacks until you can wail upon them, but others require a little more finesse to defeat. The end result is still beating them up, but when they can fly around the screen, or vanish into nothing, it can become a challenge to work out the best way to attack them. It was quite a rare thing for me to die in combat, from the regular enemies, no matter what attacks they had, though the wolves in the sales team ala Wolves of Wall Street, were quite a challenge. So, while the combat system isn’t deep, it can still be satisfying, especially after you defeat a boss that kept kicking your butt, because their room happens to be surrounded by toxic water.
Where things fall apart is with the lack of depth to the experience, which can be highlighted by things like the upgrade system, the game is fine, but it is shallow and very short. I managed to get through the entire game in just under four hours and while a shorter game is never an issue, the fact that the story is barely touched upon, nor do you have any control over the events, it all combined, leaving me feel cheated. There was a moment when you are tasked with firing an employee and while you only meet them twice before then, I wanted to not do it, but the game wouldn’t let me proceed without terminating them. The repercussions for it, had Jim attempting to explain why he had to do it, when up until that entire point, he was against the business and how they treated people, so without any preamble, he conforms for one action and then changes back. The upgrade system similarly lacks a decent amount of depth, if only because in order to purchase upgrades, you have to defeat enemies, and in doing so you earn a single coin. That means for the basic health upgrade, you need to fight and defeat 80 enemies, not a hard number to achieve, but if you want to upgrade again, you need to keep doing that. The problem with the system is that 95% of the enemies you encounter can be ignored and there were times when I would just run past them, only to remember that if I wanted to upgrade anything, I had to engage in fighting.
In the presentation aspect of the game, things are a little mixed, some good and some bad, though different might be a better way to describe things. First up is the look of the game, it strikes a balance between Asian influenced drawings, which given the developers are in Malaysia, makes sense and Cartoon Network. The catch with the animation is that things feel, not incomplete, but lacking, Jim has an idle animation where he stands there, looks around, then looks back in fear and then goes back to the start, the problem is that animation is maybe 4 seconds in length, which means you can see it often. The rest of the characters, both those on your side and those against your promotional path look fine, but again they all just feel to short. One area where things shine is the environments, some of them look like you might expect the nightmares of someone in a human resource department, but I mean that in the best way possible. There were times when I would just stop moving and look at the world around Jim, that is how wonder those backgrounds can be.
On the audio side, there is a good mix of music and some annoying vocal work, each of the locations you visit have their own audio tracks and each one is a delight to listen to. They are not the kind of music tracks I would just put on, but for the locations you experience them in, they work. The issue I had with the vocal work is that its just a lot of grunting and exasperations from Jim as he runs around the place, occasionally you get some recognisable words when he engages with other folks, but those times are rare.
The Company Man is an interesting game, on one hand it paints a realistic, if slightly exaggerated view of what office life can be like, folks messing about on office chairs happens everywhere. The other side is that it offers a short, but enjoyable game, the problem it has is it just lacks depth, from short animations, a complicated and somewhat pointless upgrade system and no real reason to explore. I did enjoy my time with the game, mostly for its take on what a corporate office can be, but for those who don’t have that experience to draw a parallel to, it might just be a theme that makes little sense.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Leoful
The Pros
+The entire corporate office breakdown feels weirdly accurate
+From the lowly mail carrier to the sales staff, there is a lot of variety in those who oppose your corporate rise
The Cons
-While you can explore, there really isn’t anything to discover
-If you don’t get the in-joke, much of the games humour will pass right on by
