E3 2013: Hands-on with Stick it to the Man for PS Vita

Here's a recipe for you.

Take the visual aesthetic of Invader Zim, mix it with the floppy-headed art style of South Park, fold in the swinging arm gameplay of Bionic Commando, and then drizzle a jazzy, noir soundtrack over top before baking it into your PS Vita.

The end result of that horrific culinary analogy is the quirky platformer Stick it to the Man - an upcoming indie title about a man with a pink psychic arm protruding from his forehead.

The main character of Stick it to the Man is Ray, a lovable everyman who wants nothing more in life than to get something more rewarding from it.

Unfortunately for Ray, his wish is granted when an imposing metal canister falls from the sky and slams into his head.

When Ray recovers, he finds that he has a pulsing, pink spaghetti arm dangling from his noggin. Thankfully, if maddeningly, Ray is the only one who can see the arm, and passerbys soon begin to question his sanity.

Yet life wasn't entirely cruel to Ray as the pink arm comes with a variety of useful abilities. Namely, he can use it to read the minds of others and peel back the very fabric of the world around him.

When the right circumstances prevent themselves, Ray can also use to the arm to swing about the environment like a modern, down-on-his-luck Tarzan.

As in Paper Mario Sticker Star, you can remove parts of the game world and stick them elsewhere in the level to solve puzzles. Unlike Paper Mario Sticker Star, you can also do this grab-and-stick switcheroo with the thoughts and fears of characters that you encounter.

This creates a complex yet fun system of puzzle solving where you need to convince characters to think of the right thing in order to progress through a level.

A depressed miner, for example, finds that he can only dig downwards - but Ray can change his demeanor by stealing an upward-pointing sales projection from the mind of a hospital administrator and slapping it into the mind of the miner.

While the platforming and mind-reading in Stick it to the Man are all quite compelling, it's the art direction, voice acting, and excellent, caper-y soundtrack that really bring the game world to life and make Stick it to the Man shine.

The oddball humour in the dialog, provided by Adventure Time's Ryan North, is just the icing on the quirky cake.

Stick it to the Man will be released later this year for the PS Vita and PlayStation 3. Although there is no firm release date or pricing available yet, it will support Cross Play and Cross Buy.

Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on