Putt-Putt Travels Through Time

The Good
As usual the graphics are nice - the more cartoony, candy-sweet type introduced in "Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo". The game also contains those trademark little details which can be discovered by clicking on a part of the surroundings. Since the above mentioned game, small hints to those details are provided - a transparent arrow means "nope, this object isn't interactive", a white one means "just click and find out!". Those little touches are typical for Putt-Putt games: little critters climb out from behind rocks, plants and clouds start moving... after some time it gets more predictable, but still is funny, also because of its anachronistic character - for example a surfing lizard in a Stone Age lake. The game has some educational value. While I would say that, despite its topic, it doesn't teach much about history, it for example manages to sneak a mathematical exercise in an unobtrusive way - the little task in Future City where Putt-Putt helps make batteries. A part I liked very much was the squash minigame, also in the Future City.

The Bad
However, all those tasks don't feel coherent as a whole game. While Putt-Putt games, being designed for children, don't feature long puzzles known from adventure games for somewhat older players, in no other Putt-Putt game did I have this much of a feeling that it's just a collection of more or less annoying tasks and not a whole game. In "Putt-Putt Joins the Circus" - which was made later, but I happened to play it just before - those strings of events already get relatively long (such as "find the saw to make a patch for the hole in the pool to make the hippo dive to get the lion's costume back"). In "Putt-Putt Travels Through Time" the puzzles (finding Pep, the lunchbox, Putt-Putt's essay for history class and the calculator) feel very separate, loose, disconnected, and soon travelling to find all lost objects gets tiresome. Probably you shouldn't admit you didn't understand something in a game for children ;), but anyway one of the minigames is extremely annoying - I mean the one where you help an apatosaurus scratch an itching spot on its back. I just couldn't get to the right spot - Putt-Putt always moved just beside it. Plus, the apatosaurus' whining voice is really hard to stand.

The Bottom Line
Collectors may be interested in trying this game out, but it doesn't feel as fun as other Putt-Putt games. Well, maybe it's just me - for example I will replay "Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo" because I love big cats, while for some other people this game could be boring too - but anyway, the topic of time travel also seemed very interesting and promising, and yet the end result just doesn't work.