I played Octodad · 7:49pm Dec 19th, 2020
The game where just playing is the challenge.
As far as story goes, it's kind of slice of life. You play the titular Octodad, although the games tutorial starts before that. You learn to navigate the controls during his wedding, getting dressed, breaking walls, and maintaining the outward illusion that you are a human.
After the wedding and opening credits you get to the current life of the cephalopod father. Waking up at the crack of noon and stumbling your way to the kitchen for your coffee. The game follows you through your usual day, upset a bit at the end.
Get your coffee, do your chores, go shopping, avoid getting turned into sushi by your neighbor, visit the aquarium. You know, normal events.
Your wife is the breadwinner in the family, and has a story to write about the local aquarium. After a quick trip to the store you find yourself making your way through the aquarium spending time with your children and not talking about your marriage with your wife.
The most notable aspect of this game are it's controls. You have to switch between controlling your "arm" tentacles and your "leg" tentacles. This game involves wildly flailing your limbs around and somehow fumbling your way to victory.
The game is simultaneously fun and frustrating. Just fun enough to outweigh the frustration. Now there was a notoriously difficult part in the PC version that wasn't in the PS3 version. However, that was patched out of the PC version by the time I got the game so I didn't experience that particular nightmare.
The game is loaded with silly jokes, and situations, packed with a nice little story all told with it's cartoonish style graphics. The big conflict starts right away, and you get a flashback level explaining it ... sort of. Ultimately the conflict serves more to create a secondary challenge and move the plot forward, in addition to being a vehicle for further jokes.
But there's even more content than just the main game. There's two packaged custom levels that are both fun and silly, and a community of creators making their own levels. So for playability this game can keep you coming back. For me, even the main story is enough to get me to come back to play again and again.
