Full Throttle

The Good
In the genre of point n' click, graphic adventure games, LucasArts has demonstrated its cool, creative and mastery time and time again. In 'Full Throttle', these masters of adventure gaming weave a sci-fi biker tale that is amazingly touching, without losing any of the mystery, suspense, humor, in-jokes and social satire that have become trademarks of other LucasArts adventure games.

The Bad
My complaints are few and, largely, minor. However, each one is worth noting.

The game is a bit too short for die hard LucasArts adventure fans with the prospect of sequels seeming more and more unlikely in an era where adventure gaming has become something of a lost art within the industry.

The arcade battle sequences with the various bikers is a bit of a challenge, for what is mostly a thinking and exploring adventure game. As a kindness, you have unlimited lives and the ability to save your progress. However, their are a couple times during these arcade sequences where my level of frustration rose more then I would have liked.

Last, but not least, their were a few problems with the storyline that are never fully explained. For example, a photo may imply that Mo's Uncle was a transvestite, not that their is anything wrong with that. But, its never developed any further beyond a vague hint. Another example would be the central storyline that Malcolm Corley would have shunned his daugher because she was bed out of wedlock. Are we to really believe that in the future, their would be a significant prejudice against illegitimate children, within the biker community? I doubt it.

Most of these story problems could have been fixed with a longer game or, better yet, a proper sequel.

The Bottom Line
'Full Throttle' was released in 1995, when point and click CD-ROM graphic adventure games were still considered popular enough to warrent the high degree of creative development, talent and wit seen in this game.

The 1980s - late 1990s was a great era for these types of games, with LucasArts leading the way. Sadly, Full Throttel was not given a proper sequel or the chance to develop into a franchise as the overall trend has been away from making these type of adventure games.

The Good
After they completed Sam & Max Hit the Road, LucasArts wondered what they do next. Their solution was to create a more serious, less humorous adventure game, with a bit of suspense added to the mix. Full Throttle tells the story of Ben Throttle, leader of a motorcycle gang known as The Polecats who are not the type of motorcycle gang to mess with.

Story: Malcolm Corley is the president of Corley Motors, the last motorcycle maker in the country. Unfortunately, Corley is about to retire from the motorcycle business, and his vice president, Adrian Ripburger, wants to take his place. He soon murders Corley and blames Ben and The Polecats for his murder, so Ben must prove his innocence. When he is about to die, Corley tells Ben that he wants his daughter, Maureen ("Mo") Corley, to take over as president, as Ripburger as president would bring disasterous consequences for the company. Ripburger plans to stop producing motorcycles to make way for minivans - something that Corley Motors isn't ready for.

Gameplay: Unlike previous adventure games from LucasArts, Full Throttle uses an advanced version of the SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) interface. The interface itself is easy to use. The game is split into two sections. You have your adventure section, where you can perform actions by holding down the left mouse button while the crosshair is highlighted in a red square. This will cause a bikie symbol to appear, and will have KICK, TOUCH, TASTE, and LOOK actions inside it. The gray area below each action tells you what object that you are interacting with. Also, holding down the right mouse button access the inventory in the form of a giant skull, with all items in the skull's mouth, plus red arrows in the eye sockets if the items don't fit the length of the mouth. Dragging the item outside the skull causes the skull to disappear, and allows you to use it on an object. This is a pretty good metaphor that LucasArts used in this game. You can't die in Full Throttle by performing unusual actions, so you are free to do whatever you like in the game, and even if that action leads you to Ben's death, you won't see one of those death screens or Sierra's death dialog boxes. Instead, you resume at the start of the scene that got you killed, and you must try a different set of actions so you can avoid this.

Most of the characters have got a bit of warmth to them, and from what I read in oleg's review, all the characters are portrayed in real life. Almost all the characters are kind to you, and will offer you help if you treat them with respect. Mo, for example, will fix your bike and be your friend for the rest of the adventure if you tell her the horrible truth about Corley's murder. Some characters, like Nestor, Bolus, and Ripburger himself, hate Ben and wants him dead.

You also have the action sequences. The first one kicks in after you leave the Kick Stand bar. These action sequences require you fighting rival gangs and trying to make them fall off their bikes, and require some skill in order to win, as using the right weapons against them will let you in, and these weapons will be obtained by knocking each gang member off their bikes. At the start, you have no weapons to start off with and must use your fists. However, by knocking gangs to the ground, you can get better weapons such as chain, board, and chainsaw. If you don't use the right weapons, you could be knocked off yourself. You also have the demolition derby that occurs much later in the game, where you must complete a task, not just ram cars to death. These sequences are controlled by INSANE, LucasArts's new scripting engine, apart from SCUMM and IMUSE.

The game consists of day and night sequences. You do most of your actions by day, but some can only be done at night. Full Throttle uses long FMV (Full Motion Video) cut-scenes, that was very popular in the 90's. I like how this is done. Pressing [F5] on the keyboard will bring up the game's control panel, which allows you to change the volume settings, save, restore, or quit a game - exactly the same sort of control panel that LucasArts used in their previous games. The only difference is when you attempt to save over the top of another game, you will be asked if you really want to save over an existing game. You have access to the control panel throughout the game, expect the action sequences.

Graphics: The graphics are in line with cartoon adventure games like Leisure Suit Larry, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max. It is excellent that LucasArts stuck that way with their graphics since when they completed Maniac Mansion all the way up to Escape from Monkey Island.

Music & Sound: The sounds in the game are realistic to the sounds in real life. For example, when the night inside the game kicks in, you'll hear crickets, owls, and other living creatures exactly as they sound. This means they used a sound file of a real creature hooting and cooing. Most of the music inside the game is of heavy-metal like, and blends in with the situation that you are currently in. Some of the tunes that you hear were actually written by bikie band "The Gone Jackals", who obviously did the music for the start and end credits, and had their songs edited for use inside the game. No, you can't listen to CD-Audio tracks outside the game for the full song since there isn't any. You actually can hear three or four of their full songs at the end, but you are encourage to buy the CD from the company listed.

The Bad
Personally, I much prefer the interface to Sam & Max where you keep clicking the left mouse button to cycle through the available actions in the game, and then clicking the left mouse button to perform that action. The installation program that comes with the game wastes a bit of time, since it copies some files to your hard drive, instead of just placing a small configuration file inside a folder, like Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max did.

The Bottom Line
Full Throttle is the first LucasArts game to be released only on CD-ROM. That means that if you don't have a CD-ROM/DVD drive, you won't be able to play the game. Overall, if you like games with a lot of action and suspense, as well as adventure, then you should find this game exciting.

Rating: ****

The Good
When I read that Mark Hamill did some of the voice acting in 'Full Throttle', I waited to hear his snivelling, whiny little voice sometime during the game because I didn't think he had the talent to do Adrian Ripburger's refined-yet-sleazy tone, or the rabid-dog-choking-on-a-razor-blade voice of Emmett the truck driver. And I didn't even dream that he was versatile enough to do both.... but I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things -- most of all, that I would get completely immersed in a graphical adventure game. That sort of thing really isn't my bag, baby.

But.... the game looked cool, and after the game sat on my shelf collecting dust for two years or so, I figured I'd taker her for a little spin. I popped in the CD, ran through a little setup dealie, and hit the road.

The intro was kinda long, but it set the mood and gave a little background to let me know what was going on. Some credits were shown in the intro, which was weird. I would have started pounding keys to try to bypass the thing, but the music rocked (I caught myself checking out the Gone Jackals website afterward...).

When the intro was finally over, I found that I was stuck in a dumpster. It was all downhill from there.... ^_^

The graphics are awesome for their time (better play Pong or Space Invaders for a few hours before starting the game), and the audio is great. The voice acting is top-notch, done by some very talented people (yes, Mark Hamill included).

The interface is easy to use, including the way-cool popup menu, and the slightly-less-cool inventory screen. There were a few problems, but more on that later.

The story was good enough that I was geniunely immersed in the game from beginning to end, and just when I would get tired of all the pointing and clicking there would be a short action game to break things up a bit.

The puzzles were a little too easy (except for a few), but it kept the action moving instead of grinding to a halt when the pea-brained player (that would be me) couldn't solve a difficult puzzle.

I've read several reviews that say that this game is too short, but in my opinion it's about right. I tend to get bored of games very quickly, and this is one of the few that I've played all the way through.

The Bad
There isn't very much wrong with 'Full Throttle'. There were some problems with the pop-up menu, which appears after pressing and holding the left mouse button. It appears after about hald a second, which was a total pain in one of the final sequences where you have to grab a certain object that appears and disappears very quickly. I'm sure there's a hotkey, but I'm a mouse-clicking moron....

Another problem was the demolition derby sequence, where after messing around for 45 minutes I had to check out a walkthrough to figure out how to get through it. Even after reading how to win it and trying for another half-hour or so, I still couldn't do it. So I... uh... used a cheat code.

The Bottom Line
This is absolutely, unconditionally, undeniably a kickass game. You might think it's too short, since my opinion is in the minority, but you'll love every minute of it.

And here's a tip -- watch the end-game credits all the way through.... the haiku poems at the end had me laughing so hard I was in tears!