It takes a special kind of man to shoot himself out of thousands of cannons, bouncing his way through 120 puzzling levels filled with deadly obstacles. Or maybe just a really drunk guy.
Nowhere in the description for YoYo Games Rick O'Shea does it actually mention our hero taking a couple of shots of whiskey to steel his will before heading to the big top to risk life and limb for your amusement, but I figure if we're going to make a play on an Irish name we might-as-well go all out.
What do you call an Irishman that sits outside of his house all day long? Patty Paddy O'Furniture. It's okay, Fahey is an Irish last name. I'm allowed to do this.
So as our hero, Rick, bounces from cannon to cannon, hopping over spike traps, avoiding sharks, and generally behaving like one of the really fun levels from Donkey Kong Country, I like to imagine he's several sheets to the wind, hurling a constant stream of colorful insults at nature as he defies its laws. If he could, Rick O'Shea would walk right up to gravity and punch it in the face.
It's definitely a game that's more entertaining if you infuse it with some imagined character. Otherwise it's merely a capable little three-star per level physics platformer with 24 free levels and some additional content you might never bother actually paying for.
And if you don't get the Rick O'Shea joke at first, don't worry; it took me a good hour before it sunk in. I might have been mildly inebriated at the time.
Rick O'Shea [Android Market]
Rick O'Shea [iTunes]
You can contact Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.