About a week ago, I had picked out a game for this column; a vague structure and topics of discussion slowly formed over the course of my week. I toyed with wording and different phrases during the long empty hours at work. And then the end of January came around and all my careful thought and planning fell apart. A new game came out that was so odd, it could be not be ignored. A game so unique it must be discussed. A story and world so silly, fun, and bizarre, it MUST be shared. I knew I had to address the elephant..erm...octopus in the room. I KNEW I had to talk about Octodad: Dadliest Catch.Those of you unfamiliar with the series probably just reread the title, and then either assumed it was a spelling mistake, thought I've gone off my rocker, or guessed it's a mildly amusing joke. I can assure you, Octodad: Dadliest Catch is the real title of a real game. Dadliest Catch is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Octodad, a student project from a group of students at DePaul university. The first game, while graphically unrefined and poorly optimized, was heavily praised for the silly storyline and the unique gameplay. The sequel picks up where the first game left off, and dramatically improves everything from the first.In both games, you play as the titled Octodad, an unnamed octopus in a three-piece suit (somehow) secretly living amongst humans, and having married a human woman and (somehow) fathering two children. The story is fairly simple, with Octodad attempting to provide for his family while simultaneously remaining hidden in society. For a normal human, such everyday tasks would, at worst, be trivial, but for the boneless and decidedly not-human Octodad, even the everyday task of making coffee becomes an amusing chore of flailing tentacles and flying physics objects.The controls are similar to the infamous QUOP in the sense that you control the limbs of your character. During gameplay, you switch between arm mode to manipulate objects and leg mode to move about the game area. In leg mode, holding the left button slowly raises Octodad's left "foot". While in the air, the mouse can be moved about to direct the direction the limb goes and then releasing the mouse button will plop the limb back to the floor. The process is then repeated for the opposite limb on the opposite button. While I quickly adapted to the unusual mode of locomotion, I found it very aggravating how quickly I seemed to run out of table space when moving in any direction. Picking up the mouse and moving the mouse seemed to be an ever-annoying problem.With a simple tap of the space bar or middle-mouse button, you'll change Octodad into arm mode. In this mode, moving the mouse moves octodad's tentacle along the horizontal plane, holding right-click will change it so the "arm" will raise and lower with mouse movement, and finally left-clicking lets you push buttons, pick up items, or drop/throw items. This method, while far less intuitive that "walking", doesn't seem to have nearly as much of a space requirement. Before long, I was pulling weeds from my wife's long, and chucking the weeds over the fence into our neighbor's yard.While I'm still in the process of playing the game (I can only take so many hours of tentacle-flailing a day), I've enjoyed the game thus far. The dialogue is pretty well written, and is usually amusing. I have heard the game begins to wear thin several hours in, and many feel the game could have benefited from being a bit shorter. The world is a bright and colorful place with numerous in-jokes and references scattered about. While there does not seem to be much in the way of replayability, I'd happily recommend Octodad: Dadliest Catch to anyone willing to try something new. And if you're unsure on the title, the first game is available for free on the Octodad website.