Stretch Panic

" YES, FUNKY~"

Stretch Panic, known as Freak Out and Hippa Linda in other countries, is an unusual action title by Treasure. You take control of Linda, the youngest in a crazy family of 13 sisters. On the way back from getting her 12 elder sisters cosmetics, a truck from The Valley of Demons drops off a package at her house. Opening the package transforms the sisters into hideous representations of their vanity, as a form of punishment. Linda, apparently the least vain of the 13, has to save them with her newly possessed scarf. 

That’s where the gameplay comes in. In Stretch Panic, literally everything in the game environment (excluding water) can be grabbed and stretched. Attacks are done by grabbing an enemy and pulling on them, letting go, and pretty much slapping them in the face with themselves, or flinging yourself into them with the scarf. The game is pretty much entirely boss battles, in the form of Linda’s twelve sisters. Most of them can be damaged lightly with basic attacks, but each has a weakness or two that deals them heavy damage. For example, in order to critically damage a sister who was basically transformed into Mister Potato Head, you have to knock all her pieces off, and place them back on her head incorrectly. 

The weaknesses all range from obscure to just plain clever, and it’s what makes battling the bosses so interesting. The game is endlessly entertaining for its length, which is good, since in whole, it’s only about 2 hours long, tops. There’s a small amount of filler in the form of extra stages, where you get the points necessary to perform a “Spirit Bomb” attack and exorcise Linda’s sisters, but the meat of the game is the bosses, and the meat of the game isn’t all that meaty. Whether Stretch panic could have gone on longer and still maintain its entertainment value, I don’t know, but what’s here already is fun, crazy, and charming. That’s plenty enough for me.

First Written on Thursday, August 30th 2012