Supreme League of Patriots Preview

The Supreme League of Patriots sounds much more interesting than it actually is. I mean, “The Supreme League of Patriots”. It makes you think of a mass of superheroes gathered around a large table, discussing their powers and ways to bring down their enemies. Maybe something along the lines of Saints Row 4, with co-op superhero tag team smackdowns on all who oppose you. Instead of this, you get a point and click “adventure” with a fat American in a costume with a sarcastic Brit as his friend and sidekick.Â

Firstly the graphics aren’t too bad. Natively, the Supreme League of Patriots runs in a window, which is strange, but this along with the resolution and overall quality can be changed in the settings. The environments are decently detailed, but for a point and click game, where clicking on everything is the key to progress, the environments aren’t particularly interactive. The sound is OK, the music is passable, nothing too special there. The voice acting is pretty good for the most part. The characters are voiced well when it comes to normal sentences. However, when the characters need to put emphasis on some words, maybe when shouting or arguing, the voices are still oddly restricted to a normal speaking volume. It’s small, but noticeably off-putting. Another odd thing with the audio in the game is the sound mixing when conversations take place. Usually, when someone speaks the background music is lowered to make it easier for the player to listen to the characters. Sometimes the background music will stay low to indicate that someone is going to respond. This is fine. What isn’t fine is when the background music increases for a few seconds, tricking the player into thinking the conversation is over, only for it to decrease again and being another section of dialogue. Waiting times between speech is also irregular, sometimes having a flowing conversation, other times waiting upwards of three seconds for someone else to start talking. Again, this sounds petty, but when it becomes regular it truly is disruptive.

You play as Kyle, a chubby Republican and his British friend Mel. Kyle is rather thick, and his attempts at humour reflect this. Mel is often there to make a quip about his lack of intelligence, usually sarcastically. You can practically see the voice actor rolling his eyes for most of his lines. I have a question- Why are all British people in games sarcastic, evil, or both? I suppose other countries think we have some sort of amazing wit, but the amount of “your Mum” and “that’s what she said” jokes I hear on a daily basis in England makes this stereotype worryingly inaccurate.

These two “hilariously” mismatched characters are about to go to a costume competition for Kyle, who dressed up as “The Purple Patriot” (probably a precursor to the Supreme League of Patriots), a hero he made up. Their journey starts in the apartment they live in, which looks like a pigsty. As they go to leave, it turns out that Kyle lost the map to the place. And here lies the first problem.
I know this is a trope in point and click adventures, losing something or searching for an object within the screen that’ll help you progress to the next screen, but this game handles it poorly. I have heard legends of how nonsensical the “adventure game logic” is, but this well and truly takes the cake. Without wishing to spoil the (I use this word loosely) “puzzle”, I never understood why they couldn’t just use the computer to search for nearby theatres in the area, then print out a map. But no, you have to search all over their nasty apartment looking for some scraggily bit of paper with some words and letters on. Apparently that leads to progress, ignoring the fact that a fully functioning computer with internet capabilities is made incredibly obvious in the main area of their apartment.

Objects that can be clicked on don’t stand out from those that can’t be. This may sound like good design, since the game would be too easy if everything stuck out, but it’s frustrating when you skim over things that you thought meant nothing. When you hover over an object, it’ll glow purple, letting you know that you can click on it. Which is nice. When you’re done clicking round the room like a moron, you can always speak to Mel, who will give you a painfully obvious hint about how to progress. To me, this is the equivalent of turning on easy mode, which any true gamer must never, ever do. But sometimes I’m truly stumped, and must succumb to the embarrassing lows of asking for help. And when the solution is revealed, it’s usually something that I would have either stumbled across by accident, or would have never thought about doing. This is just bad design. The train of thought should at least be conceivable to the player, especially if it contradicts itself. An example of this: I examined a particular object early on in the puzzle. Kyle dismissed it. I moved on. Later on, it told me to look for something written down. After searching for quite a while, I click on this certain object again, and just like that it’s what I need. I didn’t think about clicking it sooner because the game had already told me that it wasn’t important. I know point and click’s take their inspiration from puzzle games, but making progress is way too complicated in this game and takes too long to keep the player invested.

The Supreme League of Patriots does something risky: it identifies as a comedy game. There are very few games that focus mainly on making the player laugh. There are obviously a few, like Deadpool, and to an extent the Saint’s Row games from the third and up. I’ve always been told about the comedy from the Adventure Island and Sam and Max series, which were apparently quite funny, and also happened to be point and click adventures. However, for the most part the comedy in the Supreme League of Patriots falls flat. Mel does make me chuckle every now and again due to his dry British wit, but these chuckles are few and far between. You know when you breathe heavily through your nose for a second when something’s mildly funny? That’s the pinnacle of the game’s humour. I’m not a fan.

Overall, the Supreme League of Patriots is just… boring. The comedy is hit and miss, the gameplay is uninspired and counter-intuitive, the audio is weird and I found myself not caring about where the story went. Oh and by the way these games are episodic. I’ve been talking about them as one full package though, because apart from the story, nothing really changes between them. From what I’ve seen, I’d only recommend to diehard fans of point and click adventure games and dry, sarcastic British humour.