WEEK 8 | Day of the Tentacle Review

Day of the Tentacle is a humorous point and click adventure game from LucasArts.  From fake barfs, mutant tentacles, time travel, frozen hamsters, this game has it all!

Mechanics:  Do actions (look, pickup, use) and use inventory items on objects in the scene.  Players must solve puzzles to progress through the story.  An innovative spin on the traditional point and click puzzles which normally require the player to use the correct objects with each other, is the fact that the player can play from the viewpoint of not one, but three characters.  These characters are dispersed through time, separated over the space of 400 yrs.  So at one point, the player must put a key item in a wine bottle in the past, so that the character in the future can retrieve it like a time capsule.  There are many examples of puzzles involving the differing time periods and this helps to keep the puzzles fresh.  Each puzzle is funny and very well thought out and implemented, adding varying levels of challenge, but using the dialogue as cues/clues to solve the puzzles.

Story:  Quirky story line involving mad scientists, mutant tentacles and nerds!  The player must assume the role of three different characters in three time lines in order to stop a mutant tentacle from taking over the world (cue maniacal laugh!).  I love the fact that they use a comic version of the signing of the American constitution as the scene for the 200yrs in the past story line, featuring Edison, Washington and Franklin.  At a certain stage in the game in the future timeline, the player requires a way to get a hamster out of a mouse hole in the wall (think vacuum cleaner?!?!) and the players just happen to have an advertisement for a vacuum cleaner.  Meanwhile in the past, the forefathers are stuck for ideas on what to put in the constitution and have a suggestion box available for anyone to submit ideas, so ...... the way to solve the puzzle is to submit the advertisement into the suggestion box, which results in the forefathers adding to the constitution that each American home must have a "blah blah" type of vacuum cleaner in it!  This changes the time line in the future so that a vacuum cleaner appears in the house in the future, enabling the player to use it to retrieve the hamster! 

This game has some very well developed characters - I especially loved the forefathers. 

Technology:  This is an old game, so it still uses 2D graphics, but has however, a great dialogue audio and music.  

Aesthetics:  Very colourful, cartoonish style graphics help accentuate the comic feel of the game, and ties in very well with the dialogue and story.  

Overall:  Great story + witty, quirky characters + great mechanics == one of Leonie's top 5 games of all time!