Manual Samuel (Xbox One)

There is a subset of video games with a steadily rising presence that are best referred to as rage games. Rather than being designed to work along with the player for an excellent experience, these games are deliberately built with elements like obtuse controls or intentionally unfair traps and mechanics, but the appeal of these games is trying to overcome these incredible challenges despite the game actively working against you. When a person first hears about a game where every action a character takes must be done manually, their every arm and leg movement, their every breath and every blink of the eyes, it certainly sounds like its going to be a rage game, but despite having the perfect premise for one, Manual Samuel is actually designed in a way that the strange controls are an enjoyable and achievable challenge rather than a deliberately frustrating roadblock.

 

As for why you need to control all of the protagonist’s actions in such a way, that all comes back to the kind of man Samuel is. As pointed out by the sarcastic British voice narrating the game, Samuel has never had to do a single bit of work in his entire life. Living a life of total privilege, Samuel is lazy, self-absorbed, and has so much money he hardly knows what it is even worth. However, things begin to change the day he gets hit by a truck, his selfish lifestyle sending him straight to Hell. Luckily for him, living such a life does come with the perk of having plenty of life tickets, a valuable currency in Hell, but the embodiment of Death is eager to get a hold of the tickets himself, Death being pretty low in Hell’s hierarchy. Death strikes a deal with Samuel to get those tickets: if Samuel is willing to hand them over, he’ll get another chance at life… so long as he completes a challenge. For the first 24 hours back from being dead, he’ll actually have to put some effort into existing, his every function, no matter how vital or banal, must now be consciously done. He must remember to keep his back straight, inhale and exhale, and his limbs are much harder to control with his instinctual understanding of movement now out of the picture. Samuel’s no longer able to take anything for granted as he tries to get through a normal day… one that Death is deliberately making abnormal so that he can get both the tickets and Samuel’s soul.

As befitting a goofy premise for play though, Manual Samuel’s worlds and events are just as strange. Hell itself is depicted as a bureaucracy of overly polite and eager to please demons rather than a place to truly fear, but the higher ups in hell like the embodiments of Death and War, strangely enough, all have punk and skater sensibilities to their behavior and fashion choices. It’s an odd contrast to be sure, but it gives a place that you admittedly don’t spend too much time in a lot of character, especially since Death and War will come up to the surface as part of spreading their particular brand of trouble. However, Death, despite being usually depicted as some stoic and fearsome figure, is more like a teenage poser here who’s desperately trying to be cool, struggling to even pull off a single kickflip on his skateboard over the course of the game. Despite trying to be hip though, most of Hell can’t even bring itself to curse, but War definitely isn’t afraid to use a shotgun to kill anyone she’s allowed to ice. Most of your day is spent as Samuel on the surface, his own ability to talk severely hampered by his situation, but the narrator is quick to explain not only what to do, but also quick to chide Samuel for his old life and his current failures. As Death pushes Samuel into stranger and stranger situations as part of his plan to kill Samuel again, the situations only get more and more outlandish, the game making it enjoyable to not just see what task Samuel needs to overcome next, but also what weird and funny scenario the characters from Hell will put him through.

 

Control was always going to be the deciding factor on whether or not this experience is enjoyable though, and even though it sounds like a frustrating game, the major considerations you need to watch out for are easily managed. Breathing certainly sounds like it would be the most tedious, but Samuel is surprisingly good at holding his breath. So long as you remember to exhale every now and then, you can often take in one big breath and hold it for a while before needing to let go and take another gulp of air. Another consideration is Samuel’s blinking, but so long as you remember to press the button to do so a few times now and again, that’s easy to keep under control too. Samuel’s posture may give up from time to time as well, needing a quick reaffirming so he’s not slumped over, but the reason these three common problems aren’t annoying is the game being pretty kind to you if you do forget to keep up on them. Fixing your back is a quick one-and-done scenario that crops up now and again and won’t need to be considered for a while, and even if you do stop breathing or blinking for a long time, Samuel won’t die. Running out of breath will make Samuel collapse and need to take in some air before he can do anything again, but failing to blink just causes some visual blurring that gradually gets worse. Failing at Samuel’s tasks, no matter what they are, never really leads to you being punished too hard, allowing you to focus on the fun of having to keep him moving rather than making it annoying you have to control him in such an obtuse way.

While these are the basics of regular life, Manual Samuel will start easing you into more complex tasks. Walking has a pretty easy rhythm to get into, and while sometimes you may need to be quick about it or face the trial that is a staircase, falling is the only result of not getting your left and right leg movement in sync properly. These basic movements are just the foundation though, as they help to make the actual challenging activities greater obstacles to overcome. If Samuel has to do something as simple as changing his shirt, it requires plenty of button presses to pull off properly, all while making sure his back doesn’t give up and his breath is at a good place.  To help with this though, many actions have similar controls, such as things involving the right hand usually requiring the same button across different tasks. The special actions in the game all have their control demands, the player needing to sometimes spread their fingers across the controller like a game of Twister to pull them off, but you can keep trying if you fail, or it might even let you keep playing after a failure. The tasks definitely get more interesting than just dressing the protagonist though, as Samuel must complete tasks like driving a car with a stick shift, which actually serves as a pretty good way of learning it as well as being a tough challenge for a guy whose every moment is an effort. Samuel ends up having to go work at his father’s company and even deals with some outlandish sci-fi and Hell-related situations all while under manual control, and when examined closely, Manual Samuel is actually almost a puzzle game. Needing to properly execute the inputs to drink coffee, power up robots, or avoid running over little old ladies is not about the task being challenging, but the execution, the player needing to figure out how to best manage all of Samuel’s needs with the current button press arrangement. There are some actual puzzles mixed in too where the player needs to figure out which of Samuel’s limited actions can help him succeed, but the game will give you the answer if you take too long to figure out it. This can be particularly handy when Samuel gets in fights, which yes, do happen, but since his body is controlled so oddly, it’s not about fighting well so much as it is using the odd controls to gain an edge against the few foes he faces.

 

Manual Samuel is a pretty short experience on the whole, but it’s for the better the game didn’t keep going. Manual Samuel is able to keep giving you gradually stranger situations to overcome with a guy who can barely blink his eyes properly, and while it is easy to cook up many scenarios where such a control scheme could be tested, Manual Samuel moves along at a quick pace rather than weighing itself down with relying on the same theme for long. Overcoming tasks we consider simple is a good start, but the controls get more fun when things get absurd and even impossible for a regular human. Had it spent much longer or included more areas, it can be easy to see the game burning out the player. Some of Samuel’s actions are pretty similar to complete, requiring timed button presses as a bar moves a cursor back and forth, and while the walking is easy to accept as a part of the game, it could get dull if it had to connect more moments than it already does. Manual Samuel does try to give the player a bit more to do with an unlockable time attack mode where the goal instead becomes to do everything as Samuel as quickly as possible during the game’s chapters, a small addition that doesn’t add much but at least doesn’t mean the story mode stretches the concept too far to the point it could become frustrating. Some moments may be on the brink of being rage-inducing as a new activity is taught to Samuel, but on the whole, the game keeps things moving so you can eventually push through it and move onto something else.

THE VERDICT: Manual Samuel’s concept of controlling your character’s every action down to their breathing and blinking can sound like a recipe for a frustrating experience full of micromanaging body functions, but Manual Samuel’s systems are forgiving enough to make moving Samuel both challenging but not so difficult it becomes annoying. The game doesn’t just rest on the idea of doing typical things with the added challenge of awkward controls either, the game spinning off into a strange story about an oddly polite Hell, its weird punk/skater rulers, and a series of increasingly unbelievable scenarios where Samuel is still trying to just make it through the day with his strange limitations. While it can dip into frustration occasionally when it’s trying to get you to do something a bit complicated, the actions you take are mostly interesting puzzles of figuring out how to manage Samuel’s basics, whatever weird controls the task has, and any secondary element the task has outside of just actually completing it.

 

And so, I give Manual Samuel for Xbox One…

A GREAT rating. While there are no doubt people looking for the experience where the playable human character is near impossible to control as you have to manually complete every basic task, Manual Samuel focuses on giving you a few of the kooky normal considerations rather than flooding you with unenjoyable micromanagement. Samuel’s actions are the trial to overcome here, and since the basics can be kept at bay pretty easily, you can enjoy the more involved activities like driving and fighting. The control is what makes completing the actions interesting from a play standpoint, but Manual Samuel’s strange world and cheeky narrator make sure it’s putting in the effort from a story perspective as well. It fills its short runtime well, only a few moments dragging if you don’t have the control down and a few jokes perhaps being leaned on a bit hard, but most of it is spent between moments that are fun to watch or make good use of the central premise.

 

Managing a bunch of button presses may sound intimidating at first, but Manual Samuel makes sure its obtuse controls are inviting at the same time. The narrator makes messing up amusing, succeeding doesn’t require anything too outlandish, and failure is not too harsh, the player just needing to figure out the current movement controls to move onto the next idea and story beat. More a sequence of control-focused puzzles than a rage game, Manual Samuel shows you can take a premise that sounds aggravating and still make it brisk and lighthearted by making the right allowances.