It's so easy to understand why these old adventure games are well-regarded. The look, the sound, the scripts, the voice acting - all perfect. Full Throttle is such an energetic joyous thing to behold, pumping with passion and care. Look at how many exhaust pipes are on Ben's bike, the lavish animation, the empty spaces and unremarked-upon technology that suggest that this is some weird biker-centric alternate reality to our own world. I miss when a mass-market game could have this much personality!

But man it is so hard to get on its level when I have to actually play it. The moment-to-moment "take item x and put it on object y" puzzles in this aren't even particularly difficult and are actually quite logical, but there are so many times where I couldn't figure out a puzzle and the solution was just that there was a whole other screen I had no way of knowing about, or an object that blended in with the background to make it virtually invisible. Or having this happen when the puzzle is on a timer. Or having to deal with slippery action gameplay where you can't tell whether the reason you keep wiping out is because of not playing it properly or not picking the right item to use (I really hated the Route 9 section). I get frustrated so easily with these games and their slapdash interaction design and I don't know if it's a me problem or a them problem but every time I think I want to check out more I sit down to play one and get totally turned off after grinning so much at the opening cutscene.

Thankfully Maureen is cool enough that it barely matters. There's always Let's Plays, anyways.