Games Review: Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure

Thankfully I can take a break from all those Regular Show and Disney games I’ve been playing recently and try out a game for a brand new show that’s just aired on Adult Swim, Rick and Morty. Now my thought process when doing a review of a game that coincides with the premiere of its show counterpart, I just start by posing myself the question, does this game make me want to watch the show? Because when you get right down to the basics, a game like Rick and Morty’s Rushed License Game is just a huge ad for the show itself. PS. It also doesn’t help that the creator’s are being overly Meta and blunt about it.

The basic premise of Rick and Morty is that a socially awkward loser named Morty has this extremely belligerent, mean spirit, asshole of a grandfather named Rick who happens to be a super genius scientist. And in suit, the two will go on crazy wacky adventures coupled with drunk flying car driving, Rick beating the shit out of Morty and other family friendly material. The minds behind this little show are Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland. Now Dan is known for writing a bunch of episodes of Community, while Justin Roiland is more identifiable by his voice work done for shows like Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Fish Hooks and even his role as Morty in his very show. So my prediction for the actual show, Rick and Morty, based on these two men’s knowledge of comedic writing, coupled with Justin’s honed comedic timing thanks to his acting experience, Rick and Morty should be a fun show that delphs more into more angry humour.

Thankfully for those who have/will play the game now, you don’t have to wait for the December 2nd premiere of the show to see it. On the same page as Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure, you can watch the entire pilot right there. Although I decided against watching the show first and just played the game to answer my first question. Does this game make me want to watch the show? Well, the contextual story is that the game developers have placed inter-dimensional portals in Rick and Morty’s garage. Now Morty must click on everything in the house to progress the game to help Rick finish his alterations to the vacuum cleaner to close the portal. Yep. It’s a point and click adventure game, with a very King’s Quest styling to the pixelated graphics, music, and hilarious deaths.

As for controls, it’s a simple “wasd” movement controls and you click with your mouse on everything you want to click on, and you can either grab it or have Morty whine non-stop at you. I’ve played a lot of adventure games when I was younger, mostly a lot of cartoon themed ones, so I’m no stranger to this genre’s more… elusive problem-solving puzzles. To put it simply the game, the game can be very tight-lipped on what exactly you’re supposed to do with some of your inventory items leaving you to the task of just rubbing every object on everything else. Anybody will be able to figure the puzzles out if given the time (because honestly there aren’t that many choices) but the game just fails in parts to give the right context, for you as the player, to make those illogical leaps in reasoning to progress through the game.

Other than that, the game works great especially with the little score counter to show you your progress every step of the way through the game. However, time to list my thoughts on the game’s biggest attraction the voice acting and dialogue. The entire game has complete voice over to it (which is a shock to me seeing as these sort of web-based computer games rarely have any sort of voice acting in them) and the writing and tone of the dialogue illustrate both Rick and Morty’s characters beautifully. The game really does demonstrate exactly what tone the show wants to set. Although in this, the dialogue is a lot more Meta, with constant references like un-clickable background props, pixels, and inventory items. It’s not that the jokes were written are bad but it is very distracting, as the game just doesn’t have me sold that the show will have this avalanche of stupid Meta humor in it. So coupled with Rick and Morty’s double act the Meta humor just feels crowbarred in, because IT’S A GAMEZ.

So while the dialogue is overly Meta for my taste, overall the game is solid enough based on its comedic writing and visual presentation to get me interested in seeing the show. But why don’t you give it a try yourself you can play the game as well as see the season premiere so for you it’s a win-win? As for Rick and Morty well based off the game’s title, we can expect three more parts to this series of adventure games.  Will those three be as good or better than the original? We’ll have to wait and see.