Hey​ ​hey​ ​folks,​ ​and​ ​welcome​
​to​ ​another​ ​installment​ ​of​
​Dave’s​ ​Impressions.​ ​This​
​time​ ​around,
Paradigm.​ ​These​ ​impressions​
​were​ ​taken​ ​from​ ​playing​
​the​ ​game​ ​for​ ​around​
​30​ ​minutes.​ ​Enjoy!
Paradigm is a bit quirky.
I think it’s going for an absurdist vibe,
what with the beatboxing eggplant, the computer
with the Australian accent, and the sloth
who seems to be the head of a large evil multi-national
corporation.
That last part might have a redundancy in
it.
It’s definitely playing itself for comedy,
and right here is where Paradigm will either
delight or put you off.
Comedy, especially in games is highly subjective.
And the problem with a lot of comedy games
is that if the humour doesn’t work for you,
since most of the game is centered around
making you laugh, you’re not going to enjoy
yourself.
--
Paradigm’s jokes are rapid fire.
As this is a point and click adventure game,
the majority of the humour comes from looking
at world objects, and talking to other characters.
There are plenty of objects to look at, and
each line has been tailored for a joke.
This approach is likely so if one joke doesn’t
land, maybe the next one will.
At the beginning, I thought Paradigm was trying
to hard to be funny.
None of it was landing either, well except
for when the game asked me if I wanted to
watch the dog tutorial.
That got a bark of laughter out of me.
The more I played, the more jokes started
landing, and the more I started to appreciate
this strange world and its characters.
--
I think the pacing helps too.
The puzzles play second to all the humour,
and each screen seems to have one primary
objective before moving onto the next.
Even the overall motivation for the game is
simple.
Paradigm just wants to compose some phat beats.
This also means for instance that while figuring
out how to distract the junkie from his cardboard
TV full of rats, I was walking around and
just enjoying the lines of dialogue before
giving the actual problem any thought.
In the end I think your enjoyment here will
be entirely contingent on your sense of humour
and your affinity for the point and click
genre.
Thanks for watching.
