Game 10: Full Throttle Remastered

We're going from the total sandbox of X4 to something a bit more linear. Well, probably a lot more linear. This is a remaster of a Lucasarts game, a studio which made many games that I very much enjoyed back in the day and were praiseworthy for their well-crafted worlds, but also like many point-and-click adventure games could result in some frustration as you tried to figure out what item solved what puzzle.

Full Throttle is not one of the games that I played originally so this remaster will be my first look at it. Let's get on a bike and give this a whirl. Dat logo though, brings back memories.

It's a really strange logo, it felt badly drawn even in the pixellated era.

We open with a long cutscene.

These two corporate guys are in a hovercar discussing their motorcycle business, and the guy on the left appears to be the owner who is totally down with the motorcycle gang that's about to (literally) run over his car.

That's me, I have an excessive exhaust problem.

The game apparently stars Mark Hamill? Not sure who he's voicing, the main characters sound too deep.

Hamill is voicing this guy, Adrian Ripburger, who quickly establishes himself as the greedy villain that wants to take over the motorcycle company.

It honestly sounds too deep to be Hamill so he's doing some solid voice acting, or perhaps your voice gets deeper if you have no neck.

Main character's name is Ben. The other guy, Malcolm, is the current (old cool guy) owner of the motorcycle company and he wants Ben's motorcycle gang to accompany them to a shareholder meeting.

Ben seems like just the sort of person you would want to bring to a shareholder meeting.

Ben inexplicably refuses since the gang is short on money, so Ripburger takes Ben outside to discuss incentives.

Ripberger's henchmen incentivize Ben into the dirt

Ripberger then tells the rest of Ben's gang that Ben accepted the offer and 'went on ahead' to scout. The rest of the gang follow the corporate hovercar, and the game begins.

I start by punching my way out of the dumpster I got tossed into. The options menu lets you seamlessly switch between remastered and original graphics, nice touch.

The original still looked good!

But I will be embracing the future and enjoying the full-width screens.

Jesus Christ the interaction menu is terrifying!

It genuinely scared me when this thing first popped up.

The options appear to be touch / punch, eat / lick / talk?, and kick.

My bike is still parked up front and puzzle #1 is that I have lost my keys.

My bike still being here does not speak well for the intelligence levels of my biker gang.

Ok, some questionable and frightening user interface design - the skull is actually two actions depending on whether your mouse hovers high or low - at least it animates differently as a clue. It would be better as a more distinct separate option, but from switching graphics styles I think this design choice dates from the original game.

Lick...

And Look!

There's some nice character development you get even in failed attempts to interact with the world.

Try to take a picture: "I don't have a home to hang it in."

Try to walk down the road: "Nothing that way but a warrant."

It took me quite awhile to find my keys, because I asked the bartender where they were and he said he didn't know.

So I walked around the two available screens looking at / interacting with everything for several minutes.

Turns out the bartender DID have my keys - the corp guys paid him off, and the answer to this first puzzle was violence.

I'm getting the sense that I'll need to be a little more predisposed to anger then I normally am.

Indeed, there is violence! No sooner am I on the road than I'm fighting this fat dude on a fat bike.

He must have exhaust envy.

I beat the shit out of him in an awkward battle game but my front wheel comes off seconds later. I crash and total the bike in flames. I wake up later and some reporter has taken me to Lady Doctor Mechanic.

Her name is Moe.

The game uses selectable dialog options for character interactions.

Puzzle 2 is to help Moe fix up my bike, I need to collect several items from around the town for it.

Here's the inventory:

Just reach into the skull's mouth if you want something.

Looks like there's only room for four items, which is a good thing in a game like this - keeps it from getting too complicated.

This guy didn't want to let me into his trailer. Once again the answer was violence!

I knocked on the door to get him to come to it and then kicked the door in.

There's music playing in this trailer, which you can listen to here. I suspect it may be giving hints that this is a post-apocalyptic setting and we're not just driving around future Arizona. Also don't feel bad for trailer guy, turns out he stole Moe's welding torch for his shitty metal sculptures. One item down.

Ah, sadly the inventory is not actually limited to four items, I could end up in inventory hell here.

I am bring prevented from obtaining the other two items Moe needs by guardians.

One are the hover police who guard this fuel tower:

They open fire at the slightest provocation.

And the other is this doggie! Good boy!

He's just doing his job guarding the junkyard! I've been chased out a dozen times!

---

THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO THE DOG

THE DOG IS ACTUALLY FINE I PROMISE

The gas / police puzzle is clever, ostensibly you're supposed to get gas from the nearby tower but I ended up tricking the police into landing and siphoned gas from their hover vehicle.

If it were me I'd have just taken the police's hover vehicle but Ben 'Won't touch anything without wheels.'

Bike is fixed, we ride!

I catch up with the Genius Crew.

Ripberger gets impatient and attacks Malcolm, but the reporter that saved me catches the act on camera.

Is this Mark Hamill's most villanous role?

Malcolm's last words are to find his daughter Marie and make sure she inherits the company.

Ben realizes he's talking about Moe, I'm unclear on how he draws that conclusion.

Moe survives an attack by one of Ripberger's henchmen before I get back there. 

The game could have ended here if Mark Hamill hadn't gone cheap on the hired help.

By the time I get back to her, Moe is gone, took her family picture off the wall.

I gotta find her and be the antihero I was meant to be.

I head back to the bar I started at. The news is on, and a reporter that looks alarmingly like Trump reports the death of Malcolm Corley... and the arrest of the vicious biker gang (mine) responsible. I shouldn't have left them back there!

No, it's fake news!

Now there's police roadblocks out there and I'm a (more) wanted man. I find this part of the game a little confusing and I get stuck for a bit at this point.

I clearly want a ride from knife-guy in his huge truck out here but he won't go for it.

I have access to the town and locations that I solved the 'fix the bike' puzzle in which feels odd, sort of felt like that was a 'completed' area.

What am I supposed to do back here?

I did find a photo at Moe's place but that alone has not persuaded knife guy to help me out (and Ben is reluctant to use violence on him due to his knife ownership status). --- There we go, I had to go behind the bar. While the game happily highlights interactable objects with shift, it does not highlight location transitions and you have to mouse around to find them. Miranda the reporter is hiding where I woke up and implores me to find the pictures she took of the murder. She gives me a fake ID to get past the police roadblock.

The fake ID plan sounds great, Ben is clearly well suited for incognito work.

I give the ID to knife guy so he can smuggle me past the police roadblock. It works for him because they turned him away earlier, but now he can pretend to be a Fed. This is much better than my initial assumption that highly-wanted Ben was going to use a fake ID to protect himself.

Ok so... can I just hide in the back of the truck?

The open road doesn't have the same appeal when you're riding it by hiding in an engine compartment. Also, how do you end up with a grown-ass man-sized empty space in your engine compartment?!

Knife-guy gets me past the police checkpoint, but he drops off me and my bike and drives off with my bike's fuel line because he had a fuel leak. I'd have agreed to just give it to him in exchange for the help but he stole it instead.

I'm at the Mink Farm where Moe might be and I've gotta fix my bike again!

I quickly find a replacement in the nearby house when Moe peels out of the barn. She doesn't trust me!

MOE WAIT I'M THE PROTAGONIST DESPITE APPEARANCES AND THE DOG INCIDENT

LADY I'M ONLY CHASING YOU DOWN TO HAVE A CONVERSATION

We ride into Cavefish (another biker gang) territory and they catch up with the trucker that dropped me off.

Cavefish ride bikes in a matter that will utterly wreck their spines long-term.

The trucker ditches his trailer to try to stop them but they blow up the cab anyway while he's crossing a bridge over a gorge, just after Moe crosses it.

Instant karma for knife-guy

Now I'm stuck on the wrong side of a blown-out bridge, Moe's somewhere beyond, and I've got a wrecked trailer full of green crap.

Feel the adventure.

This next part is very different, I'm mostly riding up and down the road and am able to get off at various exits where I find other bikers that I can fight.

The changeup from point-and-click adventure to road warrior is both refreshing and a bit clunky.

 If I win the fight I sometimes get their weapon to improve my odds in future battles.

Sadly I lost this beauty a couple fights later, not sure if it gets knocked out of your hands or what but I would very much like this to be a permanent addition to my inventory.

This bitch is worse than an Elden Ring boss, she destroys your weapons and I've hit her several dozen times without her falling.

Go down already! A chainsaw would be a terrible weapon for this!

I did figure out that I needed to hit this guy with a board when he had his head up and got goggles from him which a guy let me know is needed to find their hideout, so I'm working on that. This is all to jump the canyon where the bridge blew up. 

Beating the Cavefish rider requires a very specific timed attack.

Paydirt! Found their hideout with the goggles. I need that ramp to jump the gorge...

That thing will get me about 20 feet across the 500 foot gap.

The Cavefish do not want me to have the ramp. When trying to tow it out of the cave I hear them coming and hide, so they think the spirit of a stuntman took it and just move it back.

Maybe they shouldn't anger the spirits and should just leave it alone!

Managed to trick some bad guys into crashing and stealing their hover lift unit, and I beat all the various bikers on the mine road and acquired their weapons (Chainsaw lady turned out to be a 'use the correct item to beat her' thing).

I think I have everything from this area and I've got the two items my bike needs to jump the gorge (a fuel booster and a hover lift), now I just need to solve the ramp / religion thing. 

The hover unit come from getting some of some of Ripburger's goons to crash their car.

Soooooo Cave Snakes have sensitive eyes, they wear the special goggles to see the road, because normally the road has these reflective things on it. Without those they might not see a curve in the road in their cave and they might die, they really need those reflectors!

Random facts about how you might trick blind people into falling off a cliff have no bearing on why the ramp is here now.

By the spirit of Evel Knievel we have made the jump!

I like the remastered art, in zoomed-out shots like this you can still see a man and his bike vs. a pixel blob. Welcome to the next scene:

Welcome to the Corley Motors factory. Oh, Corley, Harley..... I'm slow on the uptake.

Wandered around for a bit but I couldn't find any items or do anything that felt like progress. Eventually tried to leave and found a Vulture (rival gang but Moe is one of them) hideout nearby.

Unfortunately there's a minefield between me and the entrance so I can't go here yet.

I'm having trouble just getting started on this section of the game.

This guy has stuff but I have no money so he won't give me anything. I DID see him turn around once so maybe I can swipe something. He lets you 'test drive' the green car but it ran out of batteries in seconds.

There's a box of bunnies behind him which is a plausible method of dealing with a minefield....

Ah, ha! I have stolen a bunny!

Yes I am a protagonist, why do you ask?

Come on bunny, we're going to take you to all the zone screens and try to use you on everything!

---

I don't have a bunny anymore... but the bunny's battery survived the explosion!

Ben could have just taken the battery out but that's no fun. Proooootagoniiiist!

Ha, delightful!

However there's actually more thinking required than just releasing the bunnies - you need to grab the bunnies once they're out of the box and strategically place them one by one to clear a path for you.

My reward for making it to the Valkyrie base is to get drawn and quartered...

I admit to not considering the possibility that Moe thinks I killed her dad because the news said so.

But I talk my way out of that, she realizes I'm on her side and I let her know what Ripburger is up to. I'm treated to a convoluted plan involving faking our deaths so the shareholders meeting can take place involving me running around while on fire. A demolition derby is a fun concept, but oh boy is this an awful control scheme.

May I never ever have to control a vehicle this way again.

To make matters worse it's a difficult segment, I cannot get past blue car 42 here to do what I'm supposed to, which is hit the yellow car.

Hey Moe maybe YOU could work a little harder on getting around him.

Finally got it, this was a puzzle more than an action driving sequence, which does not make me feel any better about the controls, but at least it's over. I'm gonna call out this segment as an opportunity for the Remastered version of the game to have stepped up and improved on the original, either by changing it entirely into an actual fun little demolition derby game or just making the car controls not terrible.

I do love how the two henchmen have stuffed themselves into the same one-seat car for no reason.

Ok, finally got past the blue car and crashed into the yellow car and exploded in a fiery wreck.

All according to... plan?

Moe uses the wrong thing as a distraction to steal what she's after. Back at the ranch, Moe and I make a plan to break into the factory and get into her father's safe. She disassembles the bike she stole from the Derby claiming there's a key to the safe, but all we find are parts with numbers.

Great job Moe, now it's broken.

The nice part about screenshotting these games is now I can look back at this and reference it when I figure out what the numbers mean.

In the factory Rip is giving a big presentation to the shareholders.

Hi Rip, I expect we will shortly be ruining your meeting.

Got into the control room!

Ah, and we've got the reporter's original film, let's see here...

Ripburger awkwardly has to try presenting his murder of the CEO to the shareholders.

We also have the deceased CEO's will!

With Ripburger disgraced, Moe is in charge!

And then Moe and I get to ride off into the sunset. Except for the part where Rip escaped the meeting and decides to come after us in one last act of vengeance.

Rip escapes, and finds us on the road later.

The final sequence is some crazy shit!

And that's Full Throttle! I had a blast!

Die Mark Hamill, Die!