I have just finished Full Throttle so i have decided to write a small review while its fresh in my mind.
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Introduction...This is a lucasarts classic point and click adventure game with a big twist, it uses action sequences. Lucasarts is well known for its point and click adventure games most notibly Monkey Island series. It has a long history of smash hit adventure games.
This perticular adventure game sets you as a biker with attitude who gets involved with a corrupt company which makes bikes, murder, rescue, sabatage and of course to save the day.
Story...The story involves the main character you of course who gets messed up with some guys in suits who want to hire you as an escort. Following on from this, one of the "suits" is ploting to take over the company for which they are involved in and its your job to stop them. The game takes our hero from a small backwater abode of where you meet an attractive young women right through to battling on bikes with rival gang members and eventually help to save the company from falling into the wrong hands.
Gameplay..The game plays using the mouse. The left mouse button is the action button which you need to click and hold down to see a strange sort of action menu for which you can find a way to interact with the object your trying to interact with. The actions range from look using the top half of the skull, taste/speak, by the bottom half of the skull, the hand icon is to punch or pickup or use and the boot icon is to kick. The right mouse button is the inventory button.
The game does have action seqences which we cannot avoid. These range from fighting on bikes while riding against other biker gangs. Destruction Derby car battles and simply riding on the bike. There not that hard except of the Destruction derby part if you dont know what to do.
When you are done in a area you can hop on the bike and move around the game world by clicking on the edges of the screen which come up with traffic signs to show you which way to go, sometimes there are multiple paths in any area.
Puzzles..The game felt a distinct lack of puzzles in this game for some reason. There is not alot of items in this game either.
There are some enjoyable puzzles though if you can call them puzzles. Where you need to fix a toy car, steal some cute little bunnies, cross a mine field and more.
I wouldn't say any of the puzzles were particuly challanging so should be easy enough for the casual adventure gamer to complete.
The Characters...Ben Throttle, this is the guy you are playing. He has a tough sounding voice and a hard attitute to do along with his appearence. He generally is a good guy and wants to help others.
Maureen/Mo, this young lady is a toaster repairer when you meet her. She eventually becomes a main character in which parts of the story involve.
Ripburger, this is one evil "suit". He is plotting the takeover of the company he works for. And will stop at nothing to get his way.
Malcolm Corley, This is the man that wishes to hire you to escort him and Ripburger to a shareholders meeting. He owns the company and is a friendly sort of man which gets along with Ben and his gang.
Features..The game is a dos based adventure game as are most of the good ones were. The game comes in 256bit colour i presume and has a native resolution of 300x200 i would think. The game has some great animation and the sounds and voices are done well. The game contains animated cut scenes which are rendered nicely.
Graphics..256bit dos graphics. Using animation well and has good drawn backgrounds and characters. They could have used more detail i think but for the time it looks superb.
Sounds Music & Voices..Sound effects range from the bikes roar to footsteps and has alot of good sounds within the game. It can play well using ScummVM if you do have trouble.
The music is top notch. Nothing more to say apart from the music sets the moods of the varioous scenes and can really create a good scence of being there.
I found the voice were well made and used. Clearly spoken for the most part. Except during the quite sounding voices which happens sometimes but this can be fixed by simply pushing the volume up a bit.
The voices tie in well with the characters looks and behaviours I feel.
Conclusion..The game is far too short within the game world. I completed the game in less than 8 hours. This game would have benefited with the use of some extra scenes to explore and more story but as it is, its not a bad game not bad at all. The graphics were rendered well but i did use ScummVM to play this game and im not sure if it was ScummVM or the game itself but there was noticeable long chats when the voices finished they didnt continue to the next person as the animation of the mouths were still going about 5 seconds longer than they should have been.
The characters are great. We have Ben the hero with his masculine ways. We have Mo a attractive women for which there is a love interest for Ben when he meets her and she saved his life. Ripburger the arch nemises of Ben as he trys to take Ben out thoughtout the game.
The voices are all well done i cannot fault them. If only the animation and the voices were more in sync it would have felt more real and involving.
Pros..Nice graphics and voice overs.
Good story if a little short.
Great Characters.
Cons..Bad timing with voices and the animation.
Very short story.
Action sequences.
Techincal DetailsThe game sound couldn't be used using normal methods for me. I therefore used the latest
ScummVM and used 2xsai filtering to give it the smooth graphics I wanted and it got rid of the jaggered edges on the screen. I also used the high res mode 640x480 mode to enhance the graphics futher.
I do not know if it was ScummVM or the actual game but the conversations were out of sync by about 5 seconds. I mean by this that when you hear the last part of the voiced dialogue end the animation of the characters mouth keeps going for a futher 5 seconds aproximatly. And i found no way of forcing the next part of dialogue to be used as to make it more fluid.
Score
Gameplay 7/10
Story 6/10
GFX 7/10
Sound 5/10
Voices 8/10
Total 33 out of 50
The game was played on:AMD XP 1900+
768mb DDR Ram
GeForce 4 TI4200 64ddr "using latest drivers".
Soundblaster Live 5.1 OEM "using latest driver".
19" Hansol 930D monitor.
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I have added a bit more on to this review since I originaly posted it. So it is a bit more complete now and is about 98% done i think.
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