Doug Hates His Job Review

There’s no denying that Doug Hates His Job is going to be of an acquired taste. The low poly visuals, off kilter humour and somewhat nonsensical plot will not be for everyone, though there is a charm to it that I enjoyed, despite it’s shortcomings.

We play as Doug, who has the typically dull 9-5 office job, surrounded by annoying co-workers and run by an up their own ass kind of boss. We start with The Boss demanding that Doug come in on Saturday (the cheek) to finish off work he is supposedly behind on. Doug refuses, quits on the spot and ends up being chased down by The Boss’s goons to bring him back.

And so begins a mad cap hour or so that sees us fighting old people, dodging snakes, taking part in a pub quiz and more. It takes the form of an Office style mockumentary, with occasional cuts to face on interviews of the cast filling in the commentary in humorous ways. There’s no voice acting throughout, so I must admit the first time one of these popped up I was a little confused. Each is filled with fairly entertaining writing, with plenty of pop culture references and jokes. After each short interaction, which occasionally offer up choices affecting the trajectory through the game, we get to play one of the several game genres on offer. Most fall under the side on brawler style, though there’s racing, platforming, stealth-ing and a few others that we transition to throughout.

These are generally short, which is for the bes as outside of the entertaining cut scenes things don’t look so good for poor old Doug. Our first encounter with The Boss’s thugs is a side on brawler that feels pretty poor to control. We have basic punches and kicks at our disposal, but the combat is presented in about as minimal a style as you could imagine. Enemies seem somewhat impervious to our attacks before eventually falling over, though they can get some good hits in before doing so. A pathetic block is so ineffectual that it’s not worth using, and I found the easiest way to win was to spam the jumping kick attack as enemies got back up. 99% of the time they were knocked back down and couldn’t put up a fight – though the 1% meant I got my ass handed to me pretty quick and had to restart. The boss at the end of this first segment is like the regular thugs pumped up to 100 – not only do his attacks take off massive amounts of health, but he is able to withstand some serious punishment. Again, the jumping spin kick saved the day, but it was more a battle of attrition than a fun engagement.

Some of the other modes fair better; the timing based shootout with a Western Cowboy relies on a single button press, though it’s an instant fail if we miss just once. The platforming is passable, though again it’s a one hit fail. A 3rd person brawl near the middle of the game almost broke me, such was it’s difficulty not because it’s a cleverly arranged challenge, but due to some pretty tedious repetition of the one move Doug can do. Again, each of these sections are fairly short – thankfully – but the mechanics of most make succeeding difficult thanks to their sheer ropeyness. A brawl in a bank against thugs armed with guns was a second breaking point, each time I got up a shot was fired knocking me back down once more.

Conclusion

There’s a fairly entertaining story here, of a man who hates his job so much, yet continues to do the outlandish things his boss sets out for him. It’s just a shame that the actual gameplay is, quite simply, not very fun. From sloppy, unfair 2D brawling to overly repetitive arena combat, it’s likely that most will be put off before the adventure even truly begins.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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