Full Throttle

"Funny adventure game"

Haha! This game is so funny. When refused information, Ben grabs the bartender's nose ring and slams it down onto the counter. Watching the mean looking bartender --- a huge, bulky, pig-faced man with a green Mohawk and nasty looking tattoos all over his body --- squirm around like a little schoolgirl brings laughter like no other. But there was a reason for the violence. The mean looking pig guy is the only one around in the ghost town. He must have at least heard something about your mugging; but how do you extract the information?

This is the quirky kind of situation Full Throttle loves to put you in. The game's brash humor has been a welcome source of change into the adventure genre by throwing in comical puzzles, rather than the stoic, very serious puzzles found in other adventure games. For some reason, most adventure games feel obligated to take advantage of the slow pace to solve a melancholy mystery, or other such tragic event. Here, Full Throttle, a 3rd person click and explore adventure game, simply follows a character along in a light-hearted narrative that flows along beautifully. But the more ingenious aspect is the disguises they use to veil the puzzles so you never actually feel like you're solving a puzzle. Indeed, Full throttle's cheekiness grabs you from the very beginning.

When you first start the game all you see is a dumpster. A stinky, blue dumpster sitting behind some sort of a store, on top of sand that seems to indicate you're in a desert. But you don't see yourself. In fact you don't see anything important at all. Where most point and click adventure games start off with some sort of introduction giving obligatory bios of characters, you start off staring at the pugentness of a dumpster. What are you supposed to do? You move the cursor around, but you have no clue what you're supposed to be controlling. So you start clicking around. You click on the dumpster and you notice it shake. You click again. It shakes again. You click once more, and out flies Ben's fist crashing through the top of the dumpster. Evidently you've been locked inside of the dumpster and by pure luck you've escaped with a devastating uppercut punch.

A brilliant introduction to a fantastic game.

It seems every step of the way is littered with these same sort of sticky situations, providing a quizzical shock value that brings up emotions you've never really felt before. Quizzical in the level of brain power some puzzles require; shocking in the “in-your-faceness” of some of the humor. And with Full Throttle's storyline, plenty of these puzzles occur.

Upon escaping from the trash bin, and evilly destroying the cartilage in the bartender's nose, you'll learn that a corporate gang beat the crap out of you for not partnering up with them. The big timers wanted protection from your gang, Hell's Angels, while they perform illegal activities. You want no part of that so you politely deny their request. Unfortunately, the loyalty between the Hells Angels members sorely lacks any vigor ---they quickly leave you bleeding on the hot sand, while they run off with the corporate goons to earn the large amount of cash.

So you're off on a journey to investigate the whereabouts of your gang, get revenge on the henchmen who beat you up, all while barfing, puking, fighting, drinking, and poking as many girls as possible. Because you are Max. A tough looking, Harley riding, spit-at-the-lady-who-says-no, dude --- whose demeanor simply oozes grittiness. Wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans, and heavy, steel toed construction boots, you display your manliness at every opportune moment possible. If somebody won't answer the door, you let them have their peace and leave them alone for a while. Then you come back, knock on the door again, but when he answers, kick the wooden orifice as hard as you can knocking both the door and the unparticipating dude over. Toughness.

And you are in complete control of that sequence. Using a context sensitive control panel, first you press the hand symbol to knock on the door, then you press the kick symbol to kick it in and blast him down. In fact, this context menu provides the perfect controlling apparatus between your character and the surrounding environments. You can taste, feel, kick or look at basically everything around you in the crazy world of Full Throttle.

But with this click and guessing brings an unfortunate but completely excusable downfall. At times, you will not know what to do to advance the story. With so many things to interact with, you'll often times stumble around, clicking on everything, praying one of your actions will trigger an event. This “shot in the dark” gameplay mentality slows the pace of the game to an irritating level. Yes the puzzles occur at a natural pace, enfolding beautifully within the context of the story, but once you're in particularly tough puzzle, it's damn hard to figure it out. Its almost as if the game gives you too much freedom, therefore quelling any sense of direction.

And even when you think you've gotten a puzzle right, the game often throws a curveball that makes you irritated but chuckle at the same time. Of course the only way to distract a guard dog is to provide it with meat. Isn't that why you spent almost 40 minutes looking for this hidden item in the refrigerator of the beaten man's trailer park home? So you place the meat in the car, thinking you've found a way into the compound, but nope! The dog eats the meat quickly, leaving him plenty of time to chase you down. Try again.

Try again is what you will do. For there are hundreds of creative puzzles that excite gamers, whether they're a fan of somewhat slow-paced, non-energetic, point and click adventure games or not. Full Throttle jazzes up the 3rd person gameplay with stylish animations. During the cutscene with the pigman and his nosering, the camera wildly zooms in on his nose so far, that you can see little puddles of green snot. And mixing in with overall humor theme, Full Throttle has a colorful presentation, where the colors jump of the screen. Backgrounds have an old-school, cel-shaded look, resembling an old western gunslinger cartoon. Max's gruff voice sounds exactly how a tough, Harley riding dude would sound; in fact, all the characters have been well acted out, further throwing you into the tale.

Aside from a few snags with puzzles, Full Throttle's entertainment provides a title that will leave you yearning to complete a puzzle just to continue the story.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/05