Fletcher is a game developer who is running on hard times and goes to see a psychiatrist about it.  The psychiatrist puts him under hypnosis and now he must escape his own mind.  You’ll play as him in this 2D Metroidvania style platform adventure featuring off the wall humor and challenge.  Probably the weirdest thing about the game is that it’s published by Acclaim!  Huh, I guess they’re back!  Anyway, the game is available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

When you start the game, you’re only naked and can just jump.  After running around a bit, you’ll find clothes and a pistol and then the game really begins.  Similar to other games like this, you’ll run into areas where you can’t go past, and must backtrack and find items and skills so you can move forward.  Each area is just a single screen so every room is like a mini-platform challenge where you must shoot and avoid enemies and obstacles.  There is a lot of silly off the wall humor taking stabs at the video game industry.  A lot of it is self referential and went over my head, but I did get a few things like a poke at WayForward (the masters of this kind of game).

Unfortunately I just couldn’t get into this one.  I did like the retro graphics and catchy music, but the challenge was just too much.  You only get two hits to start, and your gun can only fire one bullet at a time in the beginning, which makes this one probably harder at the start than at the end.  It just felt like an obstacle course gauntlet to get to the next save point rather than a fun place to explore.  I’ve just played better Metroidvanias out there.

Kid Factor:

The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest is rated M for Mature with ESRB descriptor of Crude Humor, Nudity, and Use of Drugs.  You shoot silly enemies with a pistol and they disappear when defeated, so there’s violence, too.  You start the game naked but you really don’t see anything.  It’s just like Rampage.  The humor is just in the text only, and all of this plus the high challenge level make it a better fit for older gamers only.

Tags: Game Reviews