McPixel 3 – Review
The decision to wait a full decade after McPixel’s success to release a sequel is as absurd as it should be. The success wave the original rode cannot be replicated in 2022. Being one of the first games on Steam Greenlight helped it gain popularity; this initiative marked the beginning of the end for Steam’s status as a gated community for high-quality games. As the Let’s Players format became more popular, it flipped the script on video game journalism. It was released at a time when satire of MacGruber had at least some cultural sway, which is probably the most important factor. McPixel 3 succeeds despite the fact that Peacock did its best to prevent it. Not everyone will enjoy the game’s unique brand of surrealist humour, but fans of our kick-happy hero will enjoy this instalment very much.
You take on the role of McPixel, a red-haired guy who must save the world from a never-ending supply of explosives placed in increasingly outlandish settings. There is almost always a bomb to defuse, whether it’s strapped to a prisoner’s leg or sitting in plain sight; sometimes the best strategy is to throw the bomb in the opposite direction and hope for the best. To accomplish this, you will need to randomly point and click on random people, tools, and trash cans without knowing in advance how their actions will affect the game’s outcome.
McPixel’s interpretation of your commands and the subtle moon logic that permeates the whole experience is where the fun lies. If your protagonist insists on kicking or punching every living thing he encounters, you can adjust your tactics accordingly. You’ll get better at controlling McPixel and have a good laugh whenever he decides to smooch or lick your target instead of delivering a hefty blow.
When I load in, finding the right answer to any puzzle is usually not my top priority. The single creator of McPixel 3 includes as many random jokes, gags, and non-sequiturs as possible. These splashes of colour are often more rewarding than figuring out the key that unlocks the next level. Playing in the vein of WarioWare, the levels are divided into chunks of 5-10 missions that must be completed in quick succession. Failed to get off a wildly spinning roller coaster? You’ll have to wait before giving it another go, but in the meantime, you can try to outrun a massive snowball and the SkiFree yeti’s legally separate cousin.
All the references in McPixel 3 fit in with the game’s style of humour. Everything from the visual styles of video games to television tropes feels fair game, and everything looks a little off, when viewed through the unusual perspective of developer Sos Sosowski. Covering such a wide variety of topics helps maintain a stimulating learning environment and prevents monotony from settling in after prolonged concentration on a single, difficult task. But there are drawbacks to this novel design as well.
McPixel 3 is a lot more like its predecessors than modern sequels typically are. Like the original McPixel and WarioWare, this game’s levels are timed to keep players on their toes. The time limit is no longer a fixed amount per level; rather, it now more accurately reflects how long it will take a player to complete a level properly. As long as you understand the requirements of a level, there is no sense of urgency because you know you have plenty of time to finish it. The timer has its benefits in terms of specific jokes as well, since inaction is sometimes the best strategy.
On the other hand, if you’re struggling with a particular stage, the timer is a distraction that could be avoided. Keep in mind that unless you’ve finished the entire sequence, failing at any point will force you into a new scenario, increasing the likelihood that you’ll end up doing the same thing over and over again. There is not enough time for you to go out and see the sights. To make matters worse for a game whose entire point is to provide nonstop laughs, sometimes you have to go over the same joke multiple times before you get it right, negating any amusement you might have gotten from the game’s final punchline.
The game’s disregard for the player’s time is another major issue. It stands to reason that a mission designed for a microgame wouldn’t have checkpoints, but McPixel 3 features plenty of mammoth levels with multiple screens and complex, multi-part solutions. If you die at any point in any of these levels, you’ll have to start over at the beginning. It was unfortunate that I had to kick six people to get to my theatre seat once. It was funny the first time I heard it, but by the seventh time I was just going through the motions as I tried to figure out what was going on in the stage.
The “main menu,” an explorable city block you must traverse to initiate a new set of levels, is similarly redundant. You’ll have to put in more legwork to reach the next set of features as you progress further into the game. There aren’t even many jokes or side activities to keep you entertained on your multiple visits; it’s just more random people to kick. I wish McPixel 3 had embraced its arcade roots and broken free of its influences to provide a structure that constantly feds me new, challenging levels. Even if it was a shorter game, I wouldn’t want to spend as much time with McPixel as I would with a Call of Duty campaign if half of that time was spent slogging through meaningless repetition.
McPixel 3 is not a flawless sequel, but it maintains the high standards set by its forerunner and fulfils all of its objectives. The game may be simple in design, but it packs a lot of personality into its limited graphical options. I think the game’s mechanics and structure would have been more enjoyable if they had kept up with the developments in game design over the past decade, but I didn’t find them to be too limiting. The ability of video games to make people laugh is improving, but McPixel 3 has its own brand of humour that no other game has. In my opinion, that’s very valuable.
