BROK the InvestiGator (PC) review "Point & Kick"

I love a good pun, me. During my many years as a world-renowned reviewer of obscure video games, I've been known to spin a few decent ones in an effort to amuse, mostly, myself. So BROK the InvesterGATOR scores some early points with its dad joke title and for succinctly setting the tone. Hold on to those first impressions, and take a look at Brok himself:



He's a colourful looking fellow, a cartoony anthropomorphic alligator (or crocodile; he's not sure himself) in a silly hat probably ready to sleuth around some light-hearted hijinks. That's okay, thought past Gary; I could do with a bit of whimsy in my life. So I picked through the start menu, chose a difficulty setting illustrated by vibrant portraits of the main character in exaggerated goofy poses and took my first few steps into the game. Wherein Brok's wife dies a horrific death in a house fire while he's powerless to save her.

Neither the jaunty children's adventure initially hinted nor an outright misery simulator, Brok instead indulges in plenty of both. Widowed Brok doesn't have it easy. The dead wife sucks, certainly, but what's left behind is worse. No longer able to live in the sheltered community he enjoyed during wedlock, he's instead forced to live in the slums, relying on daily medication to survive the toxic air. Also, there's Graff, his stepson who overnight lost his mother, his home and any form of security he might have otherwise enjoyed. They're both bottom of the pile now, and while Brok tries to tackle this with enthusiastic optimism for the sake of his ward, Graff struggles. He's in his final year of school, facing a test that, should he pass it, would allow him back into the dome, away from the poisoned air and dregs of society. He's under a hell of a lot of pressure. And it never gets any easier for him.

The game pretty much centres around this; both characters struggling to cope with the burdens placed upon them. Brok is doing the best he can to be the father he never planned to be under increasingly challenging circumstances. He's a private eye not out of the love of the profession, but purely down to need; he has to scrape together whatever funds he can. A lot of activities can be covered under the umbrella of 'investigator'. Some of which he's not particularly proud of.



Which brings me back to my pun game. InvesterGATOR is a good one; good enough that I might have used it as a tagline myself. But let me tell you why Point & Kick is better. Though he has an investigative flair that does find him suited for P.I. work, Brok's a brawler by trade who previously made his living in the now illegal fight pits. To this end, most of the game's obstacles have two very different ways to bypass. Relying on Brok to puzzle things out puts the game into a point and click adventure mode, with all the inventory based shenanigans expected of it. But there's often another way, and he can choose violence. At any point, you can banish the on screen cursor used for pointing and/or clicking and morph the game into a brawler a la Streets of Rage. Sometimes you can do this to brute force yourself through a problem. Say there's a door that you need to assemble a key for - you can scavenge around for scraps to make one out of assorted junk, or just repeatedly kick the insolent chunk of wood right off its hinges. Sometimes there's consequences for the meathead approach, such as some of the eleven available endings being tied to which method you've employed the most. And sometimes, there's no choice. Some puzzles you can't punch your way out of. Likewise, when accosted by a bloodthirsty gang of literal street rats, they're not going to stop trying to cave your skull in while you show them the interesting content of your pockets.

It's a unique and interesting hook (pun intended, of course). A lot of adventure games would be a very different experience if you could press a button and suddenly have the ability to wallop things with a pipe (the things I would have done to that damn goat in Broken Sword... ) and the way Brok manages to weave these two very different genres together is nothing short of impressive. Neither mode feels cheapened by the other; it's not an overly easy adventure game, still expecting Brok to put together case theories and interrogate perps. But neither is it a bare bones brawler, featuring options it really did not need to include, like a co-op mode that lets another player tag along in the fights as Graff. They co-exist and, really, have absolutely no right to do so as seamlessly as they do. It’s an adventure gaming irregularity; a positive disturbance to the norm – you might even suggest that it crocs the boat.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (September 27, 2024) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.