[i] My Experience [/i]
Apparently, this game went free-to-play between the time that I bought it and now. I wish I would've gotten it for free.
First of all, I have to give Unusual Games credit for creating something entirely unique. In Two Weeks in Painland, you essentially play as a shady HR rep for the mob. You field resumes, hack into the phones of the applicants to learn more about them, and assign the prospects to one of four lieutenants in the gang. To figure out which applicant to pair with which man, you watch mobster shenanigans through the phone camera of each lieutenant and read their text conversations. You slowly piece together the preferences of each leader in the gang, and become better able to assign them prospects that meet their criteria.
The lieutenants have no idea that you are doing this, and if you do it poorly enough, the lieutenants will call the boss to complain about their recruits and you'll then field an angry call from the boss himself.
This part of the game generally works well, and this loop carried me through to the end. I liked becoming more adept at assigning the gang leaders the applicants that would fit best with them, and I enjoyed the mini-games that must be completed in order to hack into an applicant's phone.
Unfortunately, my praise for the game ends here. My biggest issue is with the writing. If I was still the same 18 year old that thought Postal 2 was hilarious, I'd probably find Two Weeks in Painland amusing. It reminded me a lot of Garth Ennis' writing on Preacher - that same edgy, gratuitous nonsense. Alas, my tastes have changed as I've grown older. The game also insists on sending you video after video of a comedian, who is also a mobster, but disguises himself so he can't be identified on stage. His jokes are godawful, and the game insists on pairing them with a cringe-worthy laugh-track.
The most painful part of Painland are the calls that you receive from your boss to "check up" on what you're doing. He misunderstands what a "hacker" can actually do, and is basically livid at you from the time the game begins to the time it ends. There's no pleasing him, just a continually expanding list of peeves that continually narrow your appropriate responses. I'm sure that some players found this amusing, but it just made me feel an acute lack of agency. I wouldn't mind trying to meet your demands Gustav, if the game gave me any ability to do so.
Lastly, there were a few irritatating bugs. On at least one occasion, the information that I learned from hacking an applicant's phone was in a different language, and on two occasions, the game got stuck on fast forward and I was unable to stop it. There was nothing to do but force-quit the game and load a previous save. One one occasion, this bug cost me an hour of gameplay.
I liked the basic gameplay loop, the mini-games, and the concept, but I can't say I'm happy to have spent my time playing this one. However, I think some bigger development studios should hire some folks from Unusual Games to create more fresh and unique concepts.
