This Is Fine: Maximum Cope Review
This Is Fine: Maximum Cope reimagines KC Green’s famous “This is fine” comic as a bare-bones metroidvania platformer.
This Is Fine: Maximum Cope. Credit: Hero Concept / Numskull Games
A dog wearing a hat sits calmly at a table with a coffee in a room on fire and declares, “This is fine.” Those first two panels of KC Green’s iconic and era-defining Gunshow strip became one of the defining internet images of the last decade. With This Is Fine: Maximum Cope, Hero Concept and Numskull Games cash in by turning Green’s comic into the blandest metroidvania imaginable.
Question Hound is trapped in his own psyche. The loosely connected, barely-a-metroidvania structure links five worlds themed around his anxieties—humiliation, fear, failure, loss, and regret—to a central hub. Beat a boss, get an ability, open the next door.
Maximum Cope has the energy of the worst licensed tie-in games of the 1990s. What do we do with this IP? Make it a platformer! You could swap out the art assets in Maximum Cope for almost anything else and barely change the experience. None of the mechanics feel built around the property, which leaves it not only a bad Question Hound game, but also an uninteresting metroidvania. This is the game grandma buys for you when you’re 10 because she heard you like that funny dog in a hat.
This Is Fine: Maximum Cope. Credit: Hero Concept / Numskull Games
The game is aggressively fine. It plays smoothly, but there’s nothing memorable about it. Question Hound jumps. He attacks with his hat. The first ability you learn: crouch. Think about how lame that sounds.
None of the over-the-top edge of KC Green’s best work survives the transition. The developers seem terrified of alienating players who only know the meme, so everything gets sanded down into the safest possible version of the property. This is a Wonder Bread and mayonnaise sandwich in a brightly colored wrapper with your favorite character’s face on it. The visuals mimic Green’s art just enough to trigger recognition, but the novelty of watching Question Hound walk around disappears fast once you realize there’s nothing underneath it.
I don’t know what I really expected, but This Is Fine: Maximum Cope is a huge disappointment. I still hope somebody eventually makes a game that actually understands what makes KC Green’s work special.
This Is Fine: Maximum Cope
This Is Fine: Maximum Cope turns one of the internet’s sharpest comics into a safe, forgettable platformer that barely understands the appeal of the source material.
