Death of the Reprobate (PC)

The finale of the trilogy of the funniest gaming series in many many years? Joe Richardson’s Rabelaisian styled point and click adventure Death of the Reprobate drops on Thursday the 7th of November, does it new comedic highs ? Let’s take a look.

Immortal John Triptych is on his deathbed, and it’s up to us as Malcolm the Shit to try and become worthy enough to inherit Johns goods upon his death. However to become worthy enough we have 7 good deeds to do, and thus is how our adventure starts. We play as Malcolm in a typical point and click adventure. A hugely eccentric story proceeds us, and if you’ve played any of Joe Richardson’s previous efforts of this trilogy (Four Last Things and The Procession to Calvary) you’ll be well aware of how the game plays and the amount of humour that’s crammed into these games.

Despite a lack of major voice acting (some characters do make some noise however it adds up to general background noise or a babies crying/screaming), the game still throws shed loads of actual funny story telling through storyboards and characters dialogues, with lots of little quips, jokes, and just fun storytelling, Death of the Reprobate managed to give me a good few belly laughs and kept me with a smile on my face as I played along. There’s loads of visual gags from which the entire visual presentation of the game comes hugely into play.

Visually Richardson’s vast effort is shown off again, from what I believe the reason it can take a few years between each game is how much effort goes into making these masterpieces. We’re treated to hundreds if not thousands of individual pieces of art adapted from hundreds of Renaissance, Rococo and Romantic paintings from these eras. This is where all character models come from, and are animated in a similar method to how Terrance and Phillip in South Park are. Most foreground characters are animated with slight awkward but hugely charming movement, not just human characters either, cattle, ducks, birds, even fish are all animated here, where most of these are interactive in game too. These all come off as “Monty Python-y” but growing up in the UK I’m very accustomed to this already and it all feels very familiar. Each area in game links up nicely, and again all of these are taken from paintings with each area having much to interact with.

Playing Death of The Reprobate is a hugely simple affair, most things on the map have a different cursor when you can interact, and each you can speak, touch or look at. Some of these will be NPC’s you can speak to, to further your goal (these usually have an arrow on them being held from a mysterious man), or will have something to do with what you need to do, others will just be something like a musician you can “sing” along with. Sometimes you’ll be given a puzzle which occasionally be a bit obtuse but this is very typical with point and click adventures, trying to steal something from someone where they can’t see, maybe you need to cause a distraction. Puzzles in the game will require some further thought, but if you’re struggling there’s some handy tips to keep you going.

Audio set up is pretty much filled with the aforementioned basic noises and screams, but most of the game is covered with a soundtrack of classical music from composers like Bach, Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel. This all fits the game perfectly well, as you plod on your merry way.

Death of The Reprobate is a excellent afternoons worth of a run through, unfortunately it only lasted me 3 hours, with 2 achievements left on my playthrough, so there was a tiny bit left to do but as per I’m left with wanting more and more of this content. Joe Richardson’s a genius putting this together and I hope he doesn’t leave the Renaissance era, but whatever he does after this trilogy I’ll be there on the journey.