Now that Dark Forces has been around for a while, many LucasArts fans have set their sights on the release of Full Throttle, the macho motorcycle adventure from Tim Schafer, the man who brought you Sam and Max Hit the Road and Day of the Tentacle. There's been an awful lot of hype building up around this title, including some from this humble publication. Full Throttle has been billed as nothing less than the defining game of a whole new genre.
And here's the bottom line: Full Throttle is not perfect, but when it delivers, it will blow you out of the water!
Let's start with the player character, Ben Throttle. Imagine Clint Eastwood on a hawg with an enormous chin and no guns. Too vague? Well, Ben is the leader of one of the last motorcycle gangs on the face of the Earth, the Polecats. Not only are there very few motorcycles around, there just aren't a lot of wheeled vehicles, period. Everybody's using hover engines, except for those who are truly devoted to the motorcycle as a way of life. Ben definitely falls into that category. Huge shoulders, leather jacket, a perpetual three-day stubble, and he never talks above a sardonic grumble. What a man!
There is only one company that produces motorcycles anymore in this hovercraft-laden world, and that's Corley Motors, owned by the oldest living biker, Malcolm Corley. But Corley gets murdered by his greedy second-in-command, Adrian Ripburger, voiced with excellent menace by none other than Mark Hamill. Ripburger sees Corley Motors' dedication to the motorcycle as regressive and narrow-minded, so he's all set to turn the production lines to making minivans. But first there's the matter of finding someone to take the blame for Corley's death. Guess what large-chinned character ends up taking the rap?
Now Ben has to clear his name and that of the Polecats of the charge, and must also bring Corley's daughter to her rightful place as heir of the Corley Motors throne. No one said the life of a hero would be easy.
This story is told in an outstandingly creative and entertaining way. If the graphics were a little less pixelated, the whole game could be shown in episodes on Liquid Television. Lots of unusual camera angles, fast cut for high energy! Great roaring road scenes! Virtual mumblety peg! (I'm not making this up. You can play the classic table-stabbing game with your mouse.)
And then there's the humor. I don't know if Tim Schafer could write a serious game if his life depended on it, thank goodness. This is not the same sort of jokefest as Sam and Max, but Ben's deadpan delivery of various biker soliloquies has to be heard to be believed. I've never seen this kind of balance between machismo and hilarity in computer games, or any other medium for that matter. I mean, the part where the battery-operated bunnies make their way across... oops, I don't want to give away too much.
The interface for most of the game is excellently simple and creative. Holding down the left mouse button brings up a flaming skull tattoo, and you pick from it whether you want to use your eyes, mouth, hand or foot. The right button brings up Ben's inventory in an even larger version of the tattoo. Schafer describes this not as an interface, but an "in-your-face."
So there's all these good things to recommend the game, and they're not just good things, they're GREAT things. I really think that it's the extremely high quality of most of Full Throttle that makes its few shortcomings so very annoying. They got so close, you know?
One of the odd structural elements of the game is the combination of LucasArts' traditional SCUMM engine with the more action-oriented system used for Rebel Assault. This probably seemed like a good idea at the time. For a story so involved with action, you need some real action in the game. But in practice, the highway battles get frustrating. Yeah, the moving road looks great, and the character animation is still cool, and the voices and dialogue are still funny, but the story has come to a dead standstill and the cinematics are gone. After such a concentrated dose of high-quality entertainment, it can really tick you off that you can't see any more of it until you wipe out these bad guys. And it is NOT easy. All I can say to players who get frustrated on the Mine Road is don't give up. The later payoffs are almost worth the annoyance.
The most upsetting thing about Full Throttle is that there isn't enough of it! Most experienced adventurers will probably manage to solve this thing in one or two determined weekends. But to my mind, the pleasure the player will get during that short time is worth the game's price. With any luck, LucasArts will come to their senses and release the further adventures of Ben Throttle, with more attention to the somewhat limited gameplay. But until then, I recommend you get your motor running and pick up a copy of this one-of-a-kind adventure.
