home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Cheet Sheets 1995 July
/
CHEET42.ZIP
/
2ULLTREV.TXT
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1995-07-07
|
4KB
|
82 lines
~Full Throttle
Reviewed by Martin Keen
Why are you reading this? Now don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased
you've clicked on this article's name then pressed view, but you are
surely not reading this review to see if Full Throttle is any good
because:
1. Its already been reviewed 1000 times already in other mags
2. Why haven't you bought it yet and found out for yourself?
LucasArts are brilliant. If they bring out a graphic adventure and
you enjoy pointing and clicking then as soon as the game hits the
streets you have little option but to shell out for it, forget these
stupid reviews.
BUT JUST A MINUTE! Don't go away just yet. Maybe you clicked on this
article to hear another opinion of this game, or maybe your mouse
simply slipped over this article by accident. It really doesn't matter
because what you are going to find here is why I think this is the
best game ever, but also not quite as good as Sam & Max.
I won't bother with in-depth plot details, you probably know it all by
now. Ben is a motorbiker whose in a gang, blah, blah, blah. And I wont
bore you with details about the beautiful full screen cartoon graphics
with all those numerous close ups and 3D rendered objects.
But I will give the sound a proper mention. When I first installed the
game I was quite upset because I couldn't select General MIDI for
music. Come to think of it I couldn't select any music standard, the
game was only interested in digital effects. I thought that was pretty
strange until I got going in the game itself. All the sound and music
has been digitised. For those who haven't played a demo or the real
thing not only are the songs digitised but so are all of the other
musical sounds. This makes a huge difference to the atmosphere. The
score is far beyond anything even a top of the range sound card could
produce using its custom chips. This uses up a lot of RAM but I can
see this is how all in-game music will be produced in the future.
The cut scenes are numerous and very well done. Oh, and that old
LucasArts humour is still there, all be it in a drier form. And the
addition of several subgames that are essential to the plot make a
nice interlude, especially as they all require thought and puzzles
to solve as well as being a test of reactions. Once you've given
Full Throttle a spin for a couple of hours its quite possible you'll
be thinking this beats anything the big L have done before.
And then you keep playing.
Solve a couple of easy puzzles, then its off to another lengthy cut
scene and a huge leap in the advancement in the plot. Solve another
puzzle or two which are easier than a 5th grade spelling test and
before you know it you're getting near the end of the game. Quite
simply the game is no where near hard enough (you'll hardly ever get
stuck for long) and you feel you are not being given enough to do
before you are whisked away into another major plot development. You
never have more than a couple of objects at hand at any one time and
the extremely linear nature of it all means you don't have many
locations to visit at any one time which cuts down the possibilities
to a puzzle enormously. Now compare all that to Sam & Max where you
could visit any location whenever you wanted, had loads of objects at
hand, and really stretched your brain (or phone bill on calls to the
hint line) on any one of many puzzles that were available to solve at
the same time.
I would say the game can be completed comfortably within 7 hours which
is simply not long enough. The actual gameplay here is way behind
jsut about all LucasArts games since Monkey Island 2. But despite all
these problems which really should bring this game down into the
"pretty average" category Full Throttle still manages to rise above
its faults to produce a brilliantly entertaining piece of software.
Lets just hope the next one has the playability of Sam & Max with the
audio/visual delight of Full Throttle. Now THERE would be the best
game of all time. But until then buy Full Throttle immediately. Its
small but perfectly formed.
Copyright (c) 1995 Eurowave Leisure Ltd.