Review: Manual Samuel (PS4)

Meet Samuel, he’s handsome, wealthy and most importantly – dead. A deal with Death gives Samuel one last chance to live again if he can survive a whole day doing everything manually.

Pros:

• Charming cartoon graphics.
• Three save slots.
• 2.38GB download size.
• Two game modes: Story and time attack.
• Hilarious writing matched with equally funny narration.
• You can skip cut scenes and as a nice touch you get a funny little recap on what you skipped.
• Full Platinum trophy.
• Game play is like QWOP. Each button corresponds to a limb so for example L2 is left leg, R2 is right leg, Square is breath in and circle is breath out with cross to blink.
• Mini games are in the story. Mainly just a press the button to stop the cursor in the red zone.
• Controller uses the speaker.
• Hashtags pop up as you find or do certain actions.
• On screen prompts.
• Local co op play where you share the limbs between you.
• You can set who does what by changing the layout in local co-op.
• Unlock time attack levels as you play through the story.
• Some really clever implementations for this play style. The driving section sticks out as a prime of example of how to do driving games a bit different.
• Tutorial section at the beginning for the basics but you do get help throughout.

Cons:

• Some sections outstay there welcome and become tiring.
• Game is really short.
• Co-op is a separate save.
• In some sections you will get a loop of narration that annoys you.