Game Review: Good Guys

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

I was at a loss as to how I'd review Good Guys when I first received it, as it really isn't a game at all. This is one of those animated (in a sense) comic books that used to release on DVD back in the day, and I guess still release in some capacity now. Good Guys falls into the sci-fi genre, and we'll get to its story in just a bit. Seeing as I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to cover this one, I'm just going to get into it without any more introduction. Oh, and we're going to be discussing the Nintendo Switch version of this "game" today, though it's also available on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

Good Guys is broken up into two stories, one is a full-on graphic novel with five chapters, and the other is a single black-and-white tale that's about the length of a chapter from the first story. The main comic introduces our two heroes: a cat who's skilled in martial arts, and a gun-toting dog. Both get up to all sorts of space hijinks once their owners go to sleep, and today's adventures see them travel to Uranus. It seems that an evil robot army is enslaving the animal population there, and our duo must stop them. This ultimately turns into a full-scale war, and it turns out that a giant Rat was leading the bad guys all along. Action seems to be the word of the day here, as that's most of what you get, though there are some other things about the story that I'll get to later. We're never really given a lot of background regarding our heroes, and I'm not even sure if they're part of a greater series, but I will say that the story moves so quickly that you probably won't notice. The second comic is only a single chapter, and it sees our furry friends get involved in a space bar fight. That's it, there isn't much else to tell about that one, or at least nothing that stood out as worth mentioning.

Neither story really held my attention, though they weren't bad by any means. The art was good, even if things seemed to jump around visually from time to time, and I actually appreciated the detail in the black-and-white panels a bit more. The music and sound effects that go along with each story were great too, though part of me wished for voice acting. That may sound like it's asking for a bit much, but I remember that being key to the comic DVD releases I remember picking up years ago. Presentation-wise things are a bit spottier, as it's clear that this wasn't designed with consoles in mind. Actually, I was unsure how to even go back in panels, and I was taken back to the main menu the one time I tried just hitting random buttons. It's a rather short experience overall though, so I don't want to make it sound like you're going to get lost in the menus or anything like that.

While I had some issues with the storytelling, there was one bigger issue that kept me from truly enjoying Good Guys: the odd, near constant, right-wing punchlines and messages scattered throughout. Remember those robots on Uranus I mentioned earlier? Well, they're actually "Bidenoids". That's right, we got some Joe Biden references in this one! There's even a "Let's Go Brandon!" line early on, and what I think are Obama robots scattered in for good measure. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the greater story involving a Rat that's leading them all, but it left a weird taste in my mouth. I know next to nothing about the creators of these comic books, but I came away assuming that they must currently be campaigning for Donald Trump. I'm not going to let that affect my final score of this title all that much, but trust me when I say that there lots of Fox News-esque jokes scattered about. Oddly they're pretty much only in the longer main story, but that might just be due to the fact that the second one is so short.

That pretty much wraps up all I have to say about this one. Good Guys took me less than 30 minutes to "complete", and by that I mean I made sure I looked over every little bit and even skimmed through both stories a second time in case I missed anything. I don't know if I can give this one a recommendation one way or another, but it's not a bad comic book if you're able to look past the political stuff I mentioned earlier. It also costs only $0.99, so it's not expensive either. Give this one a go if you've wondered what reading a comic book is like on a modern console. See you in the next one!

Check Out Good Guys on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/good-guys-switch/

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Overall Rating: B-

Pros:
+ The art is good for the most part, and I loved the many references hidden throughout.
+ Adding in music and sound effects was a nice touch, even though I could've gone for voice acting too.
+ At only $0.99, it may be worth picking up if only out of curiosity.

Cons:
- This isn't really a "game", and it only took me about 10-15 minutes to read/see everything.
- The story of the main comic can be really hard to follow, and the second one is pretty much just a single bar fight.
- The references to Biden and Obama, as well as "Let's Go Brandon!" made me wonder if this wasn't some weird right-wing manifesto.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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I definitely earned a snack after this one.

#GoodGuys