Summary
Do you want a Sierra interface, or a LucasArts one?
The Good
Bud Tucker tells of the story of Bud Tucker (duh), a pizza delivery boy who is desperate to find Dick Tate, an evil person who loves only one person of his kind ... himself. That's why he kidnaps the Professor and plans to use one of his inventions to clone a billion versions of himself to populate the world.
By watching the humorous cartoon sequence, I felt that I was actually watching a cartoon. It is detailed and very colorful, much like the intros to Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road. The sequence sets the mood for the game, and it is worth watching more than once.
You control Bud by choosing verbs from the menu (Pick up, Give, Use, etc.). The verbs are in the form of pictures, and are self-explanatory. They are useful for people who can't read words. If the pictures confuse you, then hitting the [F1] key will replace the pictures with
LucasArts-style commands. That's not all, but right-clicking cycles through the available commands. I prefer right-clicking because I grew up playing
Sierra games that let you cycle commands just by clicking the right mouse button until you have found the right one.
Bud Tucker is a humorous adventure game, and each location you visit is nearly full of jokes. For example, Bud talks to a giant brain at the mall, and asking it for directions causes it to say nothing but useless instructions, yet Bud still understands it. Another classic example is Dick Tate himself, who turns Barryville into Tate City. Mostly what comes out of his mouth is absolute rubbish, and I found myself laughing what he says and how he says it. I can never forget what Norris, one of his henchmen, sounds like.
The music in the game is enjoyable, and some of the pieces are what we already heard before (eg:
Greensleeves), although they eventually stop rather than looping back to the beginning. I enjoyed listening to the heavy metal tracks that can be heard in some parts of the game. You can even listen to the music outside the game, as they are stored in separate WAV files on the CD.
The Bad
There is not enough room in the inventory to hold more than three items. This is because the words/pictures take up too much room. It is likely that if I picked up something earlier on and I need to use it at a later point, it means that I have to scroll much further than I think.
Bud Tucker doesn't let you add meaningful names to descriptions when you save the game. It is always SAVE 01, SAVE 02, etc. If the game allows you to enter descriptions in, I would have entered in whatever location in the game I am in and use that as a description, but since the game does not, I have no idea later which save contains which location.
The Bottom Line
Bud Tucker is a humorous adventure game that follows the same style as those adventures created by Sierra and LucasArts. The interface is similar to those used by these companies. There may be icons and right-clicking your mouse-button cycles through the available ones, but hitting the [F1] key turns those icons into words. The interface is easy to get used to if you have played games from said companies. The music in the game is basically what we learned from our school years, but only a few of them are originals. Also, the game's introduction is quite detailed, and you can be easily tricked into thinking that you are watching a cartoon.
