Putt-Putt Enters the Race

The Good
Putt-Putt Travels Through Time was a real standout title that really showed what Humongous Entertainment was capable of doing with the character now that they'd fully matured as a company. With its more ambitious ideas and a superior execution, the game ended up being a major improvement over its predecessors. Of course, this also meant that following up on it was always going to be a tall order. But instead of trying to one-up it, Humongous chose to take its sequel in a rather different direction.

In fact, this isn't really a conventional sequel at all. While it's technically a new adventure set after Putt-Putt's previous games, it intentionally goes through a lot of the same motions as Putt-Putt Joins the Parade in a way you'd normally only see in a remake.

And I'm fine with that. While I have no love for Putt-Putt's first game, even I can't deny that it had some interesting ideas that set it apart from the rest of them. But by 1998, even Humongous themselves (or at least their publishers) seems to have come to the conclusion that their games from the DOS era were just too outdated to continue selling, with them hardly seeing any rereleases anymore. So perhaps a sequel that doubles as a remake was the right choice to bring that game's ideas to a new audience, while also providing an opportunity to execute them far better than before.

The main thing that sets this game apart from most other Junior Adventures (with the obvious exception of Parade) is the setting. Instead of exploring new worlds, Putt-Putt spends the entire game in his familiar home of Cartown. One part of the town's layout is directly copied from Parade, though the rest is very different. By the year 1998, Humongous understood that having a large portion of the town just consist of three streets that exist almost solely to grind for money by engaging in boring chores is not a very smart way to design a game, so they replaced that with proper locations. And even old areas and characters typically have new and more interesting purposes. For instance, Chuck was a very minor character in Parade whose existence a lot of players probably weren't even aware of, as he only showed up for a moment to help Putt-Putt if he foolishly blew his tires driving over nails. This time, in an amusing reversal of his original role, he's the one who blew a tire and needs to be helped as part of one of the puzzle chains.

The puzzle quality is decent this time. There's definitely more substance and creativity to them than in Putt-Putt's early games. That said, I still think Putt-Putt Travels Through Time had more memorable puzzles overall. That game's more varied setting simply gave the designers room for a level creativity beyond what this setting can offer.

The presentation is certainly a huge improvement over Parade and still pretty solid by Humongous' current standards. Even old environments look far better than they used to. Some old characters have been redesigned, but for the better.

As far as the music goes, I'd be lying if I said it was on par with the soundtracks from Putt-Putt's last two adventures. Though to be fair to Tom McGurk, it's not exactly easy to compete with both George Sanger and Jeremy Soule at the same time. He still managed to produce some pleasant tunes. There's a clear country music influence that gives the game a relaxed, rural atmosphere that fits it rather well. Due to the much more uniform setting, there aren't any drastic shifts in tone or genre between the tracks, but there are still plenty of location-specific ones that help make those places more memorable. As with most Junior Adventures he worked on as a composer, there's a location that can play various secondary vocal themes, but the ones here are pretty dull and uninspired. Thankfully, the main vocal themes fare much better.

The Bad
The voice acting is largely fine. One thing that's easy to notice this time however is that Putt-Putt has been recast. Until now, he was always voiced by Jason Ellefson. And while Ellefson had a bit of a rough start, once he got the hang of it, his authentically childlike voice really helped bring the character to life. But by the time Putt-Putt Travels Through Time was made, it was starting to become clear that he was getting too old for the role, so replacing him was a necessary move at this point. Nancy Cartwright tries her best to imitate his old voice and actually manages to get reasonably close, but it's not quite there. If Putt-Putt had always sounded like this, I'd probably consider it a surprisingly decent imitation of a boy's voice. But when it has to compete with an actual boy's voice, it still comes off as slightly artificial. Apparently, Humongous had a lot of different women try to reproduce Ellefson's voice and picked Cartwright because she came the closest. I can indeed believe that. But what I don't understand is why they never thought of hiring a new child voice actor instead.

When it comes to randomization, the game fares a lot better than Parade, which only changed in fairly insignificant ways between playthroughs. But it doesn't quite meet the standards the Junior Adventures had reached by this point, and it's certainly a major downgrade compared to Putt-Putt Travels Through Time. In typical Junior Adventure fashion, there are four items you need to obtain to complete the game. Three of them are locked behind one of two randomly picked puzzle chains. There are two puzzle chains that can't occur in the same playthrough due to them giving the same characters contradicting roles, but unlike Pajama Sam 2, the game will permit any other combination. One of the puzzle chains also has a step that's randomized a bit further between various different options and helps increase the replay value. However, what really drags this aspect of the game down is that the last item is always locked behind the same puzzle chain, with there being very little randomization to it. As a result, you always obtain it in essentially the same way each time, which is something that Humongous had mostly grown out of by now.

And while the quality of most of the individual puzzle chains is fine, as I mentioned earlier, there is one that can hardly be considered very memorable, as it simply hands you its item as a reward for briefly playing a boring minigame that isn't even exclusive to it.

Speaking of which, minigames are probably even more of a focus here than in earlier Putt-Putt games. They're superior to those found in Parade, but still far from Humongous' best. The Pachinko game makes for a cute little distraction, while a few others are unremarkable, but at least get the job done. But there are some rather weak ones as well. Harvesting fruit and vegetables in particular is largely just a boring, drawn out chore, yet the game expects you to do it for multiple purposes. A lot of the minigames are integrated pretty well into the puzzle chains, but considering they're not very fun, I can't really say they improve their quality by a whole lot.

On a side note, when it comes to changing Putt-Putt's color, this game is both an improvement, yet also a downgrade compared to its predecessor. It's nice that it now also adjusts the color of the dashboard, as it always seemed a bit weird to me how it stayed purple all the time. Yet the selection of colors has inexplicably shrunk back to the original seven. The different brightness levels from Putt-Putt Travels Through Time are nowhere to be found. And they're not going to come back either.

The Bottom Line
I appreciate Humongous Entertainment trying to do something different with Putt-Putt this time in order to give this game its own identity. But while it makes for a nice change of pace with its mundane, yet comfortable setting, the overall execution just isn't as strong as last time. The rather lackluster quality of the minigames is a notable flaw in a Putt-Putt game, since they're a fairly major component of this subseries of the Junior Adventures. And while the other aspects are handled better, none of them are really strong enough to make the game stick out.

The Good
As I wrote in the summary, it's the most "difficult" of Putt-Putt games I have played. Maybe it can be a disadvantage for the youngest players, those in the lower range of the intended age group - however, older children and adult children may find this game really fun. Of course it remains childish and easy, but not as infantile and trivial as some other children's games.
The game has vibrant graphics in the typical Putt-Putt style - lush colors and, as usual, lots of little details. Since "Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo" looking for these hidden details has been easier - arrow color shows if the element is interactive. One of my favorites: check out one of the bushes close to the game's beginning. Bigger and bigger animals walk out from behind the relatively small bush: a duck, a bear, a horse, an elephant, and finally the most absurd - a dinosaur.
Other inhabitants of Cartown have a personality of their own which can be seen even in those short conversations. The ones I liked best were Mr. Fenderbender with his funny slips of tongue, Rover, who started selling cold drinks at Cartown after returning from the moon (it was really nice to see him again)... and Betsy Bulldozer due to her unconventional gender role.
I would say the game rather has less educational value than some other Putt-Putt games (especially the above mentioned "Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo" with lots of facts about animals or "Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon"). However, I wouldn't call it a banal game. Maybe we, adult children, aren't as well suited to judging educational games because we already know all those things such as reading or counting... Anyway, "Putt-Putt Enters the Race" does its educational job in areas such as object and shape recognition (gathering fruits and vegetables for Mr. Baldini at the farm or sorting trash into tight slots) or connecting numbers to their names (selecting Putt-Putt's official racing number for his flag).
The game world is now quite large and some areas don't open up immediately - for example you need to find a hook to let a crane move pipes blocking a road - only then you are able to go to Cartown's third square. It features several minigames or subquests, such as (already mentioned) trash sorting, bringing vegetables from the farm, digging up items buried in the backyard by a slightly hyperactive poodle, playing pinball at the toy store (much better than the very primitive-looking "pinball" in the first Putt-Putt game) and, of course, the final race. Unlike in real racing, you can keep retrying until you are satisfied with your performance... The race is actually not too intuitive - I don't see a way to accelerate, so it seems the only method that guarantees a good result is avoiding obstacles that slow you down. If you do it well, winning the race should be definitely within reach - anyway, it's a children's game, so it just can't be too difficult.

The Bad
In Putt-Putt games you typically collect some objects - for example you need coins for tasks required to complete the game and you can also use them for some optional actions such as going to the carwash. In this game you can collect two kinds of objects: coins and empty bottles left all over Cartown - you get a coin for every three bottles put into the recycling machine. Any number of coins higher than five is seen as just five and any number of bottles higher than three is visible as three. What I regret is too little control over how much you have - you can't check it because if you click the objects, Putt-Putt will say what they are, but he doesn't say how much he has (which he does in some other games). You will only see it when the number of coins or bottles carried drops below the mentioned numbers.
By the way, the recycling machine is also rather boring. Maybe it's better in a game for the youngest players, but still I find it a waste of time when Putt-Putt repeats every time "I need to put in two more bottles / one more bottle before I can recycle them". Another task gets more difficult with time - when you are collecting produce for Mr. Baldini for the second time and you click the box, Putt-Putt won't say which fruits or vegetables you need - he will only say he needs some "which look like this". Something similar could have been done with the recycling machine - it would be slightly harder and, first of all, less boring if Putt-Putt stopped saying how many bottles he needs yet after having used the machine for the first time.
A thing to look out for is going automatically to the race after having gathered everything. If Putt-Putt also wants to make himself pretty before the race (get a paint job and/or go to the carwash), you have to leave some task(s) uncompleted. My advice is to fill the gas can at the very end (the station is next to the carwash anyway), however if someone doesn't know it or think about it before, an unpleasant surprise is possible.

The Bottom Line
The game may indeed be slightly too hard for the youngest children - I think most kids under the age of about 7 won't be able to complete the game by themselves. However, children's games aren't only for them... even playing adventure or platform games not specifically intended just for children does in my opinion require some level of appreciating "your inner child", so I would hypothesize that game players on average cherish the "childish" part of their personality more than people who don't like games. These are traits I describe as "being an adult child" and Putt-Putt games can also be interesting for this group of players.