Human Resource Machine (Wii U) - Review

Human Resource Machine is available now on the Wii U.

I didn't expect this game to be as tough as it is. I think I jumped to this conclusion because it's on the Wii U and I primarily see that as a machine for kids (don't shoot me, I still love it). Oh how wrong I was. 

In Human Resource Machine you play as a cute little dude/dudette who goes to work for a big corporation. Your supervisor will set you tasks which you then must complete to finish the level. These tasks start off simple enough - you just move stuff from one side of the room to the other. But they soon become much more complex, with you needing to only take certain things to the other side and leaving the others behind. 

Now this sounds simple, doesn't it? What's so hard about just sorting through some mail or whatever? Well yeah, doing this manually would be much simpler, but in Human Resource Machine you don't sort things manually. Instead you basically write a line of code for your little employee to follow. Now, I'm not a coder nor have I ever dabbled in any form of coding, so I found this really quite difficult. I found it really hard to wrap my head around the code required to hit some of the goals for each level. I was fine when it was just move that from here to there, but the minute it started asking me to leave zeros behind I started getting lost pretty fast. 

And that's where Human Resource Machine really falls down. It's cutesy art-style leads you to believe that this is going to be a much simpler game than it is. I found myself getting incredibly frustrated with it, fairly early on which is incredibly disappointing. My partner however is an analyst and he whizzed through it with ease, laughing at how hard i made it look. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this game feels too tough for the casual puzzler it appears to be - it should have been more serious looking in my opinion. The graphics definitely attract a younger audience, but I fear my son would break the Wii U pad in frustration with this game. 

The touch screen works really well for this game (which is also available on Steam) so much so that I wonder whether it may be ported to iOS or Android. I think it'd be a good game to while away the commute with, but maybe not if you struggle as much as I did. I don't really know who to recommend this game for, definitely not kids or the more casual puzzle players. But at the same time saying people who code will love it seems silly too - if you code for your job do you really wanna come home and play a game that basically sees you writing code to complete menial tasks?!

5/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review.