Day 151 - The Professional
Short and Free, Immersive Sim, REDACTED ·
Skeeter’s Take:
The Professional reminds me a lot of QWOP - a game in which the player had to control a track star’s individual leg muscles by pressing Q W O and P on their keyboards. Turns out trying to multitask four muscles is pretty difficult, and also really clunky and funny looking. The Professional expands upon this idea by allowing the player to control the legs, arms, and even neck of the “Professional.” The catch is you can only control one limb at a time by rotating it like an object in Blender. This simplifies the demand on the player’s motor skills, causing them to put more of a focus on planning ahead and positioning limbs in beneficial positions. Though my main method was to position my limbs at varied positions and then widely spin one of my arms to try to sort of catapult myself forward (I did not win), it feels like the dev wanted me to slow down and think about how to overcome the obstacles the game threw at me.
To me, this makes The Professional feel a lot like QWOP mixed with a clunky physics based puzzle game. The Professional cleverly uses the setting of a jewel thief that has to sneak past typical heist movie hazards. Hazards such as: laser beam trip wires, wooden boxes, and stairs.
I was laughing pretty hard watching my masked bandit, dressed in his finest suit, attempt the stiffest Worm dance over a wooden box, only to fail many, many times. Overall, a pleasant experience.
Side note, I saw a streamer try to speed run this game like a year ago. I wish I could remember his technique.
Recommend: I windmill-armed my way into lasers for 15 minutes then decided I didn’t have the patience to get to the diamond. I still had fun. Yes.
Replay Percentage Chance: 50%
Time Played: 15 minutes
Sam’s Take:
I too was reminded of QWOP when starting this game. I spun my arms around wildly to propel myself forward, laughing at the different positions my body would land in.
Eventually I got lucky enough to get over the box. I was worried about the laser tripwires, but it turns out hitting them just stuns you and pushes you back a bit. You can brute force your way through them eventually. After that, I thought the path to the diamond was clear. I gazed longingly at my prize.
But I forgot about the final boss of this game. THE STAIRS!
The staircase is where this game goes from QWOP to Getting Over It (SAM EDIT: I didn’t realize until linking the two games that QWOP and Getting Over It are both designed by Bennett Foddy, wild!). Flopping will never work, the slope of the stairs will send you flying back into the laser grid if you rely on the spontaneity of your limb flails. The stairs require TECHNIQUE!
The backwards crab walk was promising, but ultimately too fragile. One wrong move would send my legs over my head into a backwards somersault of shame. What eventually worked was a method where I’d put one knee down at a time, prop my legs up, then set the next knee down, inching my hands forward when needed. I called this method “the thigh burner”.
After that, getting to the diamond was a cakewalk.
I stood victorious (after accidentally flipping my entire body and getting lucky hitting the glass case with my foot).
…except they make you take the diamond back to the start.
It’s alright though, turns out going down stairs is much easier than going up.
It’s wild how much thought and technique I had to put into the funny body game. Each joint has a different angle of allowed movement, and it becomes clear as you get a deeper understanding of the mechanics why that is. If every joint could move freely, you could basically place your limbs anywhere, the limitations force you to really think about how far to bend your knee (and to take advantage of the full 360 movement allowed by the God-joint known as “shoulder”).
This Torfi guy made both this and A Firm Handshake, two of our favorites in this review series so far. They’ve got a way of getting the most out of funny animations, with this game’s puzzle elements, and the enjoyable narrative of Handshake. Torfi is two for two, let’s see if they can keep it up.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 10%
Time Played:
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