A remaster of Day of the Tentacle
Originally released by LucasArts in 1993 as a sequel to Ron Gilbert’s ground breaking Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle is a mind-bending, time travel, cartoon puzzle adventure game in which three unlikely friends work together to prevent an evil mutated purple tentacle from taking over the world! Now, over twenty years later, Day of the Tentacle is back in a remastered edition that features all new hand-drawn, high resolution artwork, with remastered audio, music and sound effects (which the original 90s marketing blurb described as ‘zany!’) Players are able to switch back and forth between classic and remastered modes, and mix and match audio, graphics and user interface to their heart's desire. We’ve also included a concept art browser, and recorded a commentary track with the game’s original creators Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Larry Ahern, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian. Day of the Tentacle was Tim Schafer’s first game as co-project lead, and a much beloved cult classic! This special edition has been lovingly restored and remade with the care and attention that can only come from involving the game's original creators. It’s coming to Windows, OSX, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita early next year!
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Day of the Tentacle is a sequel to Maniac Mansion, with Bernard from that game getting a letter in the mail from Green Tentacle that Purple Tentacle has mutated and is trying to take over the world. Bernard and is friends Hoagie and Laverne journey from their college dorm back to Dr. Fred's mansion to try and help Green Tentacle, but all they do is let Purple Tentacle loose. Dr. Fred tries to use his time machine to go back in time to the previous day to keep Purple Tentacle from turning evil, but the cheap diamond in his time machine breaks, throwing Hoagie 200 years into the past, Laverne 200 years into the future, and Bernard is stuck in the present with Dr. Fred. Even for a LucasArts game, this is a pretty darn strange game, but it's also quite a funny one. There were plenty of times I got a really good laugh out of just how funny the dialogue is. There's some humor that's aged fairly poorly (an instance of homophobia here and there and a fair amount of ableist jokes as well), but it's a far more tolerable amount than in something like Sam & Max: Hit the Road, for example. As far as comedy games from the 90's go, I think Day of the Tentacle is probably about as well-aged as you're gonna possibly get XD
The mechanics of the game are a point and click adventure game, and there's really nothing too special about it in that regard. The main gimmick of the game is the three characters being stuck in the three time periods, and you can send small (or rather, whatever the game decides is "small" enough) inanimate objects between the time machines between each person to help someone out in a different time period. It's a bit of a pain to go back to the time machine constantly if you're stuck and just throwing items back and forth, but it isn't the worst thing in the world. The game also has a lot of cases where you'll use an item for the last time, but that item doesn't get consumed, so you just have a seemingly still useful item in your inventory (and there are a few items that are entirely useless red herrings, so far as I could tell). All that said, out of all the 90's point'n'clicks I've played or watched, this easily has the least moon logic out of all of them. This is a game that is very completable without using a guide, and that's honestly one of the best things about it aside from the good writing.
The remaster has the original graphics/UI and the new remastered graphics/UI that you can switch between at any time via the settings menu. In the remastered UI, you don't have all the commands on the lower screen, but instead if you right click on an object, the possible interactions you can do with it appear on a scroll wheel that you can choose from. The item list will also automatically hide below the screen and it'll pop up by mousing over the lower left corner. It's a really nice way to improve the UI and make the whole game just that much more convenient to play. The music and VA is also all great and sounds nice in the remastered stuff. The music is very fun, and has a happy vibe to it that really reminds me of something like Banjo Kazooie.
What is NOT nice about the remaster is that it runs like absolute trash (and while my PC isn't a behemoth, it ain't no slouch in terms of power). It almost feels like they old engine is simply making the new parts work on my Windows 10 PC, because there was a ton of mouse lag and even lagging audio clips. It seemed to get better if I shut down the game and booted it back up again, but it still felt baffling that a remaster of a game this old still runs this badly.
Edit: A lot of the gameplay lagging (although I'm not so sure about the audio lagging, as I think that's just the emulation) was due to faulty drivers on my end. Definitely sucks to find that out so much later, but good to know it wasn't the game's fault~
Verdict: Highly Recommended. While I haven't played that many old point and clicks, I think this one has aged fantastically. From the humor that is still for the most part palatable to modern sensibilities to the almost complete lack of moon logic, this is an excellent game to pick up if you want a taste of that old 90's point'n'click fun without all the bull crap frustration that goes along with them (at least if you can get past how it runs).