Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a wonderful adventure game with a large dose of humor and a touch of platforming.
What Is It? Thank Goodness You’re Here! is an adventure game. You are a salesman sent to a nondescript English town and quickly find yourself assisting various townsfolk with their problems of the day.
The game is a series of ridiculous help quests spread out over a few different sections of town. You start, innocently enough, by assisting a boy get his arm unstuck from a sewer grate. That opens a hole you use to get to the next area, and so on. Most of the issues, and all of the people, are absurd; you will be doing some pretty weird things in this game! You will circle back through each portion of town a few times, learning the ins and outs of this town and many of its inhabitants along the way.
You move around freely and have two action buttons: jump and hit. Want to talk to somebody? Hit them. Want to open a door? Hit it. Want to help return pigeons to the man living in the dumpster who thinks he’s a pirate? Hit them.
The art style is great. I am a sucker for a bright, cartoonish color palette that is featured. Characters look appropriately goofy as do all of the various things happening in town.There is always something to see, and hit, as you move about. This draw of not wanting to miss any of the one-liners or visual gags really hooked me into this game.
The whole game can be completed, while seeing just about everything, in around two hours. The humor ranges from juvenile gags to explicit (hence the M rating, although I’m not sure that is fully justified). Your enjoyment of this game will completely depend on how well the humor lands.
The Best Part: The irreverent humor. This is clearly the primary draw of the game and it delivers from the start. During the opening cutscene, there is a jingle for Peans: “not quite peas, not quite beans, but something special inbetweens.” There are funnier lines in the game, including a few which made me audibly chuckle, but that properly sets the tone for what to expect. It serves as a safe ejection point as well if you don’t find any humor there.
The Worst Part: Unskippable cutscenes. This is the smallest of nitpicks because you should absolutely not skip any of the cutscenes, they are great! I only noticed that you can’t skip them when I started another playthrough to clean up the platinum trophy (which is very easy, for the trophy hunters out there).
The Verdict: I’m not an adventure game fan, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! caught my eye through its art style and humor. I am likely still not an adventure game fan, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! is definitely the game I’ve enjoyed most from the genre. Getting to spend a couple of hours helping these strange people with their ridiculous problems was a good break from a standard gaming session.
How to Play: PlayStation 4 & 5*, Switch, PC
*console played on for this review
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