If you aren’t familiar with Day of the Tentacle Remastered, perhaps you aren’t familiar with LucasArts games either. The Secret of Monkey Island is the most famous. Not just because it’s a fantastic game, but it was one of the earliest point and click titles that came to the consoles.
The original Day of the Tentacle came out in the early 90s – 1993 I believe, and I had the game on 3.5″ floppy disks. Further down the line, a CD-ROM version came out that was voice-acted. It’s another point and click adventure game from LucasArts, who along with Sierra, were at the top of the game in them good ol’ days.
In the game, you play one of three teenagers who arrive at a motel – the former home in Maniac Mansion, initially on the PC but ported over to the NES too, and the dwellers are the same family in the title mentioned above. It’s an adventure, you can’t die in the game and the challenge is to solve puzzles. But I haven’t finished the story, have I?
Day of the Tentacle Remastered Review
The trio – Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne must stop an evil purple tentacle from taking over the world and enslaving humanity. Cue time-travelling toilets that keep Bernard in the present day, Hoagie bumping fists with George Washington and Laverne working as a waitress in a cocktail bar in the future. In the group, you solve problems in your time that help change the past, present and future – interchanging items you collect on the way by flushing down the John.
I wouldn’t say that Day of the Tentacle Remastered is difficult. Having completed this, possibly in the double digits, I did find that I forgot the solutions to some of the puzzles/item combinations. You won’t wander around aimlessly, as there aren’t many locations. It’s a process of elimination. In the remastered version, if you tap up on the d-pad, points of interest will light up, allowing you to identify any items you need to pick up or use.
Sure, it’s a short game and not overly challenging, but the dialogue is the star for me here – it’s witty throughout and has lots of in-jokes. As a LucasArts game, you have the ‘Easter eggs of things like Star Wars references (Bernard says to Dr Fred at one stage that he is their only hope). Something I missed the first time around was a Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders poster, which made me want a remastered version of that too.
Curse you, cursor!
With Grim Fandango Remastered, the controls were a little more advanced/modern, and you could control Manny with the analogue stick and interact with characters and objects quite naturally. Day of the Tentacle Remastered introduced the verb wheel, so pressing square on a person or item will bring up a series of images that represent an action. However, for die-hards and nostalgia fans in general, you can press the touchpad button and switch to the original graphics and have a list of the actions available.
When Day of the Tentacle first came out, the visuals popped immediately. Bear in mind that the first iteration didn’t have full voice acting and was only text. When the voiceovers kicked in, this game felt like you were playing a cartoon. Now, the visuals have been redrawn in HD and certainly look the business.
Some of the achievements are a little more troublesome and time-consuming. In particular, there was a trophy for not skipping a cutscene. I didn’t see a notification when I finished the game, so I must have skipped one in error. I overthought it and then found that I wasn’t skipping dialogue either, in fear of ballsing it up. In reality, there were only a few cutscenes, and dialogue could be skipped. Still, it took me an hour here and there during the week to go through unlocking duties.
Day of the Tentacle Remastered Review Summary
Day of the Tentacle Remastered is one of the best point and click adventures. It’s quite possibly one of the shortest, but the experience is up there with the best. Look for it by name!
