Day of the Tentacle Remastered (2016) - Review

Deciding to revisit some childhood memories by replaying old Point & Click (P&C) Adventure games with my kids has turned out to be a blessing and a curse. I'm always happy to see them enjoy "real" games, as I like to think of anything that isn't just clicking and combining random stuff (wait a minute, that describes the average P&C game).

But it turns out they enjoy them a lot more than I expected them to. Maybe more than I ever did when I originally played them, probably fueled by the fact that we get to complete the games unlike what I managed on my ownsome. Especially my 6yo daughter loves the experience of sitting together and trying to figure out the puzzles. Now she nags me every day for us to play some more. A blessing and a curse.

Unlike my memories of Secret of Monkey Island, I remember clearly not getting very far into Day of the Tentacle as a kid. Having replayed it now as an adult, I really can't blame my child-self for failing at this. Day of the Tentacle epitomizes everything that I worry about when playing a P&C game i.e the puzzles being obscure to the point of almost being impossible to solve. Day of the Tentacle requires some next level out-of-the-box-thinking to finish without a guide and there are puzzles in there that will haunt me forever. Oh and just a warning here, I will give some examples of these puzzles so if you haven't played the game and don't want any tips, beware.

Day of the Tentacle is technically a sequel to Maniac Mansion, a game I have never played. Fortunately it only vaguely references that game (at least to my knowledge) and it doesn't feel like you need to know anything about Maniac Mansion to fully enjoy this game. Because even though Day of the Tentacle is a P&C game that is hard as nails, it is very fun and probably one of the best examples of the comedy from writers Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman and Ron Gilbert who also made the beforementioned Monkey Island game and the sequel to that.

The original Day of the Tentacle was released in 1993 and the remastered version adds some updated graphics and a very enjoyable commentary track that runs throughout the game as you play it. This style of updated graphics worked so much better than the one they used in The Secret of Monkey Island, as they've basically kept the original style but smoothed out the pixelated edges which makes things a bit easier to see.

You control friends Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne as they get thrown across time to stop the evil purple tentacle from taking over the world. Hoagie gets stuck 200 years in the past and Laverne 200 years in the future, while Bernard stays in the present. A big part of the gameplay is adjusting the timeline so that whatever Hoagie does in the past changes conditions in Bernard's or Laverne's timeline. This is a very fun concept and used brilliantly throughout the game, it also ups the ante for your guesses on how to solve different problems. One of my favorites is when Bernard puts a sweater in the tumble dryer for 200 years so that when Laverne gets it in the future she can use it to warm up a hamster that has been frozen for 200 years. 

The controls are the good old SCUMM controls with the option to use different verbs with different objects in your surroundings, verbs like "push", "open" or "pick up". In the remastered version you get a wheel of options that works very well, much better than solution they went with in the remastered version of the Secret of Monkey Island.

When I played it as a kid I never got further than getting Laverne out of the tree. Finally getting to play through the game properly was exciting and fun. I remembered some puzzles in the beginning but very quickly we got stuck and we pretty much had to use a walkthrough for 80% of the puzzles in the latter 3/4 of the game. 

Like any good game, a good P&C game needs both a good story and good gameplay. Day of the Tentacle delivers. I usually get annoyed when I constantly have to consult a walkthrough, but the characters and the story of Day of the Tentacle kept me curious and I didn't mind checking lists. 

But how hard are the puzzles anyway, you might wonder? Let me give you one example...

*deep breath* In the future, Laverne needs a tentacle to move from the place he is guarding. To make him move she needs to make him chase after some humans. To let the humans out of the prison you need to remove the prison guard. To remove the prison guard you need to give him a dinner invite. To get the dinner invite you need to win the human exhibition contest. But Laverne has no human to compete with. So you get a mummy in an upstairs room and put roller skaters on him so you can roll him around. You also need a name tag that you get from one of the other guys. Then you need Hoagie to send you pasta that he finds in a cupboard, use it as hair on the mummy and comb it with a fork. All this is to win one of the three competitions needed.

There are definitely puzzles in this game I would've never been able to figure out or even guess at.  Maybe not even figure out with the old and tried tactic of just combining everything in your inventory with everything you see. Since you play as three different characters, in three different setting and with three different inventories, it just makes the variables so much larger. I don't feel dumb playing this game, I just accept the whackiness of it.

But fortunately everything else about the game is so well done and written, you forgive it and you want to continue trying. I definitely did as a kid, I threw myself at the problems many, many times and I even managed to figure out that you needed to paint the Kumquat tree fruits red so that Washington will think it's a cherry tree and chop it down, meaning it disappears in the future and Laverne falls down.

But then I couldn't figure out that Laverne needs to send the diagram of a tentacle to Hoagie so that he can give it to the woman who creates the American flag, turning a flag in Laverne's timeline into a tentacle costume so that she can move around freely. Yeah... I never got past that part. Until now.

If you tell me you've played through Day of the Tentacle entirely without help, you have my eternal respect. It is probably the most difficult P&C game I have played, simply because of the somewhat random and jokey nature of the puzzles.

But the game is full of memorable characters and gaming moments that will make it worth your time and frustration. The game manages to stump you but make it all the more rewarding when you figure something out. It deserves its place as one of P&C games finest, especially considering when it was released. There have been many good P&C games since then, but few as fun and funny as this one.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009) - Review

You've probably had the experience of watching a movie and realizing half-way through that you've already seen that movie and just completely forgot about it. Have you ever had the opposite though? Where you are certain you've already played a game and realize you definitely haven't, half-way through? No? Just me then I guess.

The original The Secret of Monkey Island was released all the way back in 1990, and while I am old now I was too young then to play it at launch. No matter, I definitely got around to playing it at some point while growing up. I remember the bar with all the pirates, the word-fencing, the annoying boat salesman. Yeah I pretty much remember finishing The Secret of Monkey Island.

So when I decided to introduce my kids (6 and 11 yo) to this little gem I thought I basically knew most of the puzzles and we would breeze through. I felt like I remembered all of the game even though many years had passed since I last properly played it, though my memory of the actual ending was a bit hazy. True enough, we got through all the way to Stan without much trouble - sneaking through the forest, getting shot through a cannon and feeding rabid poodles rancid meat (don't worry, they're not dead, just sleeping).

The game puts you in the shoes of Guybrush Threepwood, an up-and-coming wannabe pirate. As he goes around trying to prove to the real pirates that he has what is needed to be one of them, the bad guy LeChuck (the meanest pirate and also a ghost) kidnaps Threepwood's newfound love Governor Marley. The story might be whacky (in all the good ways!), but the gameplay is straightforward. While this wasn't the first game to use Lucasarts famous SCUMM system (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) it works great here. Maybe some young-uns don't like the idea of having to choose a verb with an item to solve puzzles (which was a novelty then, before this you had to type the verb yourself which was a guesswork in and of itself), I personally quite enjoy this system. Newer P&C games will automatically choose the right verb, but that is making things a bit too easy I find.

You can't beat the original. Can you?

Ok, it's probably more of a time consuming gimmick nowadays, but I like it, ok? Unfortunately the version we were playing was the Special Edition, which means they added voice acting and completely revamped graphics. Unfortunately because, old trout that I am, I also definitely prefer the original graphics. My kids did not however, and two against one the revamped graphics won out. 

They're ok and in some parts, in all honesty, they make it easier to make out which things you can interact with. But they're just... ugly... compared to the lovely pixels of the original. The Special Edition also provides background music, which was quite nice, I must admit. While the voice acting was perfectly serviceable, a character like Stan works best as a silent antagonist if you ask me. He really grates after 10 seconds. The Special Edition also keeps the verbs, but hides them and your inventory behind buttons ("I" for things in your inventory and "Ctrl" for using verbs), clearing out your screen. I actually found this less user-friendly, but maybe that is just me.

The revamped graphics adds quite a touch.

After we had dealt with Stan and Guybrush leaves the island with his ragtag team I slowly start to realize something. As he sets foot on the beach of Monkey Island it hits home. I don't recognize any of this! I am having a proper Berenstain Moment as we start to make our way through the jungle and make friends with Bob and the Cannibals. 

I knew that the game takes place on Mêlée Island and never thought to question why the game was called Monkey Island. But half the game actually takes place on Monkey Island, a half that I don't have any memory of playing. The memory I have of playing and finishing the game, is actually of me playing the first half over and over. I never actually made it to Monkey Island as a kid!

So while the first half of the game went swimmingly and I still knew most of the puzzles, I had no clue what to do once we got to Monkey Island. Me and the kids managed to figure out quite a lot of the puzzles on our own, otherwise we resorted to a walkthrough for some of the trickier ones (both the boat sections for example).

Actually getting to Monkey Island felt... wrong. It felt out of place. It felt like it was tacked on and didn't fit the atmosphere of the rest of the game. While Mêlée Island is dusky, moody and piratey, Monkey Island is its polar opposite with sunny beaches and literal monkeys running around eating bananas. I always loved the perpetual night time of Mêlée Island and didn't feel comfortable running around getting a sun tan on Monkey Island. Most importantly, it didn't fit the internal feeling I had of the game. An image I now have had to severely revise.

This doesn't mean I think The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a bad game. I still think it is one of the best P&C experiences I've had and probably one of the best P&C games there is. The writing is just superb, Lucasarts at its height of funny and whacky. There are many memorably characters, scenes and puzzles in this game and I thoroughly recommend it.

But the Secret of Monkey Island from my childhood memory is gone. And that stings a bit.

The Whispered World (2009)

There is a game genre I keep coming back to even though my success rate is abysmally low, and that is the point-and-click puzzle genre. The amount of PoC games I have legitimately cleared compared to the amount of games I have tried is a pretty sad read, but I just can't let it be. A good PoC adventure will stay with you for a long time and a good PoC adventure is one I am the most likely to want to replay. I've replayed Broken Sword and The Dig several times and I am currently replaying Secret of Monkey Island.

The Whispered World was released in 2009 by German company Daedalic who are now probably mostly (in)famous for their terrible Gollum game which was released last year (2023), which in fact was so poorly received Daedalic decided not to develop any games anymore and instead focus entirely on being publishers. Before that they made games like the Deponia series, which I've only tried for a bit, and The Pillars of the Earth, which I completed.

The Whispered World was one of the very first games Daedalic released and maybe it was a sign of what was to come. It seems like Daedalic was always stronger in ideas than they were in programming and realization of those ideas.

The game centers around the circus clown Sadwick. He tours the world with his brother and grandpa, and a larva named Spot which is also used as a tool for some puzzles in the game in a Deus Ex Machina way. True to his name, Sadwick is ironic and some times cynical about himself and the world around him and quite likable. The writing is decent, I especially enjoyed the fact that most combinations you end up clicking seemed to have its own unique line of dialogue attached to it, which is a nice change from the umpteen "I can't do that" you often get to hear in PoC games. I couldn't stand the voice acting however and it's a blessing that the option to turn it off existed. 

The game is almost exclusively controlled with the mouse, with which you move Sadwick around and make him interact with the world. This works fine and I don't particularly miss the old verb-boards where you had to guess your way through "pull", "push" and "pick up". Though I guess you could argue it added to the puzzle element. Either way, I always find that I am bad judge for the quality of puzzle designs, since even the simplest puzzles can stump me. In Whispered World there are certainly a few head scratchers that feel like the way to get there is to start combining a bit of everything. There is a point where you have to scare your brother, and to do that you have to build a scary figurine from odd things you've picked up. I doubt anyone would figure out exactly what pieces fit together, this is a matter of trying everything with everything. There is also a few points where you have to give the correct dialogue options to NPC's and I never could get the hints as to what was the right thing to say. 

The story of Whispered World starts with Sadwick having a bad dream. The animation is very of its time, I got instant flashbacks to homebrew flash animations that were floating around the internet around then. The world is going to end somehow, and Sadwick involuntarily ends up being both the only way to save it and the possible cause of it. It never bothered me that it doesn't make much sense, the world is a cozy fantasy world full of odd creatures and is fun to explore. Things are random, but they make sense within the setting of The Whispered World.

The game was good enough to keep me interested and when I was about to give up because I got stuck I enlisted my kids to help me out. It became something for us to try to solve together, and progress was a lot easier with three heads (albeit some young ones) at it than just my own. Too bad then about the programming.

It started already pretty early in the game, where something that was required to happen to progress just didn't. Fortunately a restart of the game solved it then, but about half way through it happened again. I needed a certain object (hay from a pile of hay) to continue the game, but trying to pick it up Sadwick just kept telling us he already had it. Googling around it seems that game breaking bugs were not uncommon in this game and after having tried for a while without success we decided to give up. Even though the game was ok, none of us were interested in replaying two hours to get to where we were, only to perhaps end up getting the same bug again.

If you're starved for some PoC gaming and haven't come across this one yet I would say it could be worth checking out. Unfortunately this game requires you to be careful for the wrong reasons so don't repeat our mistake and make sure to keep several save spots going.