TROVER SAVES THE UNIVERSE Review for PlayStation 4

I Turned Myself into a Pickle, Trover! I’m Pickle Abstainer!

I’m sure that if you’re at all familiar with adult cartoons in the past few years, you’d be at least aware of Rick and Morty. Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, the show was a huge hit for its dark humor, absurd yet somehow likable characters, and fantastical episode premises. So when it was announced that Justin Roiland would be in charge of making a video game, the concept was certainly interesting. How it lives up to this premise will become clear by the end.

Developed by Squanch Games, Trover Saves the Universe has a very simple premise, much like many episodes of Rick and Morty. An evil villain named Glorkon stole your dogs to put in his eyeholes and gain ultimate power so his really ugly (but beautiful in his eyes) wife will come back to him. Go stop him because he’s being a dick. The actual plot doesn’t really deviate from this, but like Rick and Morty, the focus is on one-off side characters, and the main characters who are of course voiced by Rick and Morty themselves. A lot of the humor is lifted from the show as well, and is just as dark as you’d expect from this premise. One of the first jokes involves you beating up a jerk-ass old man because he’s in your way, and then you can threaten to beat him up some more if he doesn’t shut up. Later in the game, you can kill some guy by dropping a TV in his bathtub and there are no consequences at all, despite Trover trying to act as a pseudo moral compass.

Now, I’ve never actually watched Rick and Morty myself, and I’m not exactly a comedy expert, but I did find a lot of these jokes pretty funny. One of my favorites is the beginning, where they disguise the tutorial as a cheesy rom-com and that got me cracking up quite a lot. But my absolute favorite was at the very end, which is where I get into spoilers.

So at the end, everyone in the universe dies, and while you think it would be a sad moment, everyone just gets to chill in heaven and be happy. Even the guys who hated your guts in the game are just kinda chill with you. The guy you BLEW UP by feeding him too much is chill. And then you get your reward for 100% completion: Your controller turns into a penis vibrator. That’s not really a joke.

Overall, the story and comedy did entertain me, but the one complaint I do have is that this game suffers from what I call “Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric Syndrome,” in that characters never, ever stop talking. It’s not uncommon to sit there for five minutes at a time listening to dialogue, and while it starts out funny, eventually they just repeat the same lines and it becomes tiresome. Even in games like Kid Icarus: Uprising, which are heavily dependent on their characters and dialogue, they knew when to shut up and let you platform around in peace. That’s not really the case here.

As for the other stuff, the music and graphics are pretty solid. The graphics mimic the style of Rick and Morty, and for a home console game it’s pretty good-looking. Not on the level of something like, say, Spider-Man PS4, but still really good. The music’s alright. I don’t remember it, but it’s good to listen to in the levels and never irritated me.

Now as for the gameplay, you control a species known as a Chairorpian. As a Chairorpian, you can’t move around. At all. Instead, you sit in a chair and control this purple guy named Trover, who moves from beacon to beacon so you can warp to him to progress through the level. Essentially, this “character” is nothing more than a personified camera who occasionally can say yes or no to dialogue questions for different results. However, you do get access to a feature allowing you to move up and down to see more of the level, as well as the power to grab and throw things around, mainly for platforming with Trover. Trover’s equipped with a beam sword that lets him perform simple combat maneuvers, and a jump, which you can upgrade to a double jump and glide, along with a roll that’s so situational I almost forgot about it. You get these by finding new Power Babies that Trover sticks in his eyes to get all his powers, kinda like that Glorkon guy.

Overall, this gameplay is…passable. The platforming is alright, but nothing too special, the combat is mindless and repetitive, and the issues with controlling Trover and not the Chairorpian mean that you’ll often be extremely far away from Trover, which limits the precision of your movement and makes basic platforming almost nightmarish at times because you can’t see where to jump. The game also doesn’t really mix it up that much aside from one section where you collect Glorkon clone guts in a cauldron by killing them, and a few moments near the end where you have to run an electric conduit through a series of nodes to activate devices.

So, to distract you from the somewhat menial gameplay, there are several Green Power Babies scattered through each level. Collect enough and you get an extra hit point. Collect all of them for that penis vibrator I mentioned earlier. Overall, the Power Baby sidequest is pretty good. The Babies are hidden well enough that you will have to explore the whole level somewhat thoroughly, but not SO impossible that you’ll frequently need to check a guide, minus one or two Babies here or there.

There are also achievements in this game, and they’re the typical meta stuff you would find in games like this. Examples include listening to a guy ramble for five minutes, killing a guy by dropping a TV in his tub, and sinking 100 baskets (which even the game itself mocks you for).

That’s about it though. There aren’t any real boss fights, and the gameplay doesn’t change that much. I will say this probably isn’t a game I’ll replay, given that the only reward for 100% is kind of underwhelming, and the gameplay isn’t good enough to hold up the game without its writing, which gets kind of stale by the end. I did enjoy my time with it, but 30 bucks is WAY too much for this kind of game. I’d say if it drops to about 15-20 dollars, then pick it up for the writing alone, but otherwise I’d say there are more fulfilling platformers you could be playing instead.

Final Score: 7/10

Check Out the TROVER SAVES THE UNIVERSE Trailer:

Trover Saves the Universe is available for Playstation 4 and Playstation VR, PC via Epic Games Store and Steam. For the latest news, follow @TroverGame on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.