Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory - Review @ CGM

HiddenX

HiddenX

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CGM has reviewed Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory:

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory Review

A Disappointing Adaptation

Paranoia is a tabletop-RPG that emphasizes improvisation as players confront a maddening bureaucracy where the slightest missteps are treasonous and treason is punishable with a swift, absurd death.

By contrast, its video game adaptation Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory is plodding and lacking in any of the charm that makes the source material memorable.

You play as a clone working in a vast underground city that is managed by an AI named Friend Computer that is one part surveillance state, one part middle management, and one part utterly insane. As a Troubleshooter, you have to complete missions for Friend Computer alongside a small cadre of companions who will stab you in the back if you so much as step out of line. And I do mean that literally; colour coded lines are just one of the myriad of inane rules that you must follow if you hope to remain in Friend Computer's good graces.

[...]

Score: 3.5/10 - In contrast to its source material, Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory is a bland RPG that is as slow as it is forgettable.
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Unfortunately, this is pretty much what I expected. Paranoia is a really hard setting to convert to a video game, since 99% of it relies on the chaos that happens when the players do their thing and their interaction. The "job" itself is just a frame to give as much rope as they need to hang themselves. This seems to be hard to translate to a video game without investing 90% of the time to code in as many possibilities as many people can think of.

Well, looks like I won't even consider this out of the bargain bin when it's available outside the epic store.
 
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The premise of the game did super not interest me from the get go, so I will not be sad to miss this one.
Nonetheless, I would have liked them to succeed with this rather non-mainstream game.
 
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There's no way they could have captured the game itself. As the article says, it's based rather massively on improvisation. You don't roll to hit in Paranoia, you say you're trying to hit and the GM says yes or no depending on which would be more fun. I guess he could roll dice if it doesn't matter.

However, they COULD capture the setting. Sounds like they tried but just weren't up to it.
 
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