Manual Samuel Review

Controlling someone’s every motion, movement or bodily function seems easy enough – we all do it on a day to day basis. Good luck.

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Blink Twice for Yes:

Curve Digital have always been curators of the weird and unusual, so it’s with no surprise that they’ve brought us Manual Samuel, a strange game about manually controlling every bodily function and movement of a corpse. Because if they weren’t going to tell this tale, who would?

Story:

Yes, the titular Samuel is dead – or at least dies within minutes of you starting the game. But, our leading man is offered a once-in-a-lifetime deal with death – live on manual mode for twenty four hours and live again.

It’s a funny set up, thanks in no small part to Manual Samuel’s distinct brand of black humour. It all felt very British, and the game refuses to shy away from – in fact, focusing on – the nastiness of shoving Samuel’s would-be-corpse through a variety of deathtraps.

The writing is quick and the wit is sharp. One of my favourite little details is how, after skipping a couple of cutscenes (don’t judge me, I was playing through a second time!) the dry, hilarious narrator started attempting to catch me up speedily before, after skipping too many, he started attacking me for not caring about the work of the developers and how I was on my own if I hoped to understand any of this. It’s this kind of writing that elevates Samuel above its peers. I think humour is incredibly difficult in video games, but Manual Samuel got me laughing quite a few times.

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Gameplay:

To make good on Death’s deal, players will have to deal with mundane tasks like breathing in, out, blinking, rotating limbs and rearticulating your spine constantly as you carry out day to day tasks.

At first it feels like QWOP, an old Flash game that saw you controlling the limbs of an athlete to see how far you could make it down a track before collapsing. It was fine in a dumb time-sink sort of way, but I was worried that Manual Samuel would have the same short-term appeal.

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Luckily, the two games prove wildly different. Whilst QWOP was an exercise in futility with no hope for most of us, Samuel is just about stretching your brain around the myriad commands until it all fits. I noticed myself getting tangibly better and automatically doing most second-to-second tasks without thinking about it before too long, and I might have actually been able to get good at it if the devs didn’t continuously mix things up and change my tasks between levels.

They don’t let the formula sit still for long, and it works really well. Just as I got used to walking around, grabbing things and peeing properly, I was thrust into a car and forced to learn how to drive stick. It’s this constant tempo shift that keeps things fun and enjoyable in Manual Samuel, and you’ll not find yourself bored during the runtime of its campaign.

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Presentation:

The visuals of Manual Samuel are a bit ugly. The art style isn’t my bag anyway, but even so the textures are often blurry, pixel-ridden messes that don’t look pretty no matter what. It feels like a game from the late nineties, more at home on a web browser than a PS4, but regardless once you’ve gotten over that it serves its purpose well.

The whole presentation feels like it’s supposed to be as awkward, angular and janky as Samuel’s erratic movements under your confused command, and it ‘fits’, in a weird way.

 

Conclusion:

For anyone looking for a fun little game that has a good sense of humour and a more competent take on those awkward flash games of yesteryear, look no further than Manual Samuel.

It’s a barrel of laughs with friends, too, seeing who can screw up Samuel’s existence the worst in any given situation. Well worth a look.

Good

  • Very funny narration
  • Silly and frustrating in the best possible way

Bad

  • Graphics could be better
7.9

Good

Story - 8
Graphics - 7
Sound - 8.5
Gameplay - 8
Value - 8
Reviewer - GamerKnights

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