Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse

Cyanide & Happiness - Freakpocalypse nails the look of a comic strip, but its gameplay is just as paper thin.

Freakpocalypse moves the Cyanide & Happiness universe into the gaming sphere much more effectively than its predecessor. Its main story arc of finding a prom date for its hero Coop works well as a narrative thread to hold together all manner of tasteless nonsense. The game is being advertised as the first of a trilogy and has enough to see and interact with to satisfy its core audience. The relatively low price and time investment of around ten hours are inviting, but I suspect the subject matter and confounding frustrations brought on by genre design tropes will put off the general gaming audience at large.

Simply put, if you are not a die hard fan of Cyanide & Happiness, you will most likely not enjoy Freakpocalypse.

Although the episode ends with an interesting cliffhanger, the game itself turned out to be mediocre, so we have no desire to wait another couple of years for the second episode to appear.

You've read the comic strips. You've watched the videos... now play the game: Cyanide & Happiness - Freakpocalypse.

Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse is a solid point-and-click adventure game full of adult humor. Fans of the source material or things like South Park will likely enjoy it the most as this style of humor isn’t for everyone. When the other parts of this story come out I do hope they make it a bit more challenging and come up with more content that doesn’t feel so much like fetch quests as those two things are what bothered me the most about this first iteration. Outside of that I enjoyed my time with Coop and look forward to what comes next.

People who like casual games and dark, immature humor might enjoy this, but Freakpocalypse was truly designed with the fans in mind. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a complete game, but rather the first installment in a trilogy. That being said, it will still take you several hours to complete, especially if you take your time exploring and speaking to everyone. While it’s not a challenging game by any means, the absurdist humor is enough to make it enjoyable the whole way through.

Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse isn’t going to blow you away. It’s certainly not going to have you reaching for the medicine cabinet, though. I suppose much of what you get out of CH: F will depend on your ability to take a joke. The gameplay won’t be what keeps you coming back, but Coop’s story has much left to be told, and I’ll be there for the sequel. The rub is that if Explosm doesn’t bring their A-game for episode two, I’ll probably take a swing at Coop, myself.

Really, you’ll get more mileage out of the game if you’re a fan of the series. Freakpocalypse makes it clear from the start that it’s not for everyone, and some may not even see it through to its end depending on how much you can stomach. But the development team stayed loyal to the comic’s material, and there are some good moments – and laughs – to take in here if you can weather the storm. Plus, honestly, we have to support point-and-click games as much as we can if we want to see them make a comeback. Even if we have to put up with a Freakpocalypse to get there.

As a game that stands on its own, I find Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse to be disappointing and a little dull. Yeah, it did tease a few laughs out of me, but nothing to the same degree as the animated shorts available on Youtube or the web comics. And the gameplay doesn’t stand out, either. There are numerous excellent point and click titles out there that are both hilarious and that feature challenging, well-designed puzzles that tickle the grey matter in a most delightful way. Compared to these, Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse is like Cooper himself: kinda boring.