I'm not trolling here, I'm genuinely curious.

I'm a big fan of point & clicks. Nowadays it's probably my favourite genre. I haven't played most of the classics back when they well still new (various aspects, like the infamous moon logic annoyed me too much) but I have later cought up with most of them, and recently I picked up Full Throttle remastered, expecting to have as much fun as I did with Day of the Tentacle (which is to say a whole lot of fun and then some).

It's godawful. It's easily the worst game by LucasArts, and one of the worst in the genre period. And it has nothing to do with the remaster. It's just the way the game is. What do I like about adventure games? What's their very essence? Good story? Full Throttle has a short, bland, predictable story in an uninteresting setting. Pirates and ghosts? Nope. Alien planets? No. Time travel? Get out of here. Search for Atlantis? Fuck you. Cartoon buddy cop movie about a missing big foot? Wrong. Let's have a game about bikers driving aound a desert, a motorcycle factory and shareholder meetings. That's exciting stuff, right?

Well, how about the characters then? Adventure games are famous for their colorful, memorable characters. Well, too bad because there are barely any characters to meet in this game, there's barely any dialogue and none of it is memorable in the slightest. I think one location of Monkey Island would have more dialogue than this entire game. The locations here are boring and bland too, both visually and in terms of things to do and interact with.

Ok then, how are the puzzles? Surprise- also barely there at all. Why bother with inventory puzzles in an adventure game? Please enjoy horribly badly designed action sequences, endlessly driving around the same part of the desert fighting other bikers and a demolition derby with atrocious controls and a puzzle impossible to figure out other than just by pure accident after hours of trial and error!

And yet people seem to genuinely like this game. Great reviews, "my favourite LucasArts game" and all that. It just boggles my mind.

Well, i'll talk about myself and not people in general.
Also wanna answer the question before i read any reviews or other opinions regarding the game, so i'll have my opinion as unbiased as it can be. So here i go:

I first played the game in Summer 2018.I think 23 years after it's release. Wanted to play something relaxing in my free time.
So i picked it up, and started playing it on Steam. Of course i'm talking about the remastered version.
What i liked about the game was :

-The desolate atmosphere/visuals. You had those strange weather effects, and those weird shapes overall. The desolation of the plains were giving me a Mad Max and a SteamPunk/MotorPunk vibe which i like.

-Characters and writing were cool. I especially liked the old guy running the company and his daughter. Also the writing made me like/dislike the characters that i had to like/dislike so i guess that's also a bonus achievement for them. And it doesn't usually happen for me (most times it's cheap and i couldn't care less).

-The Voice acting was good. Although i also found it somewhat pretentious for the main character.

Now something i didn't like was some glitches bugs , especially on the Destruction Derby Arena. That was the most annoying part of the game for me and it actually cut points from the game's score.

But anyway that's my opinion about the game.
Very good game even if i played it 23 years later.

Edit
Now that i read your opinion i see some of your points and i agree.
It doesn't have much dialogue and also the plot is kind of predictable, yes. Not much there to say.
But i disagree on the locations. I loved em!

There is a cheat hotkey to win every biker fightings. The bad guy is voiced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker).

No, i meant OUR main character was a bit pretentious! You know biker dude, with a very deep atonal voice. Anyway...

I would like to know too. I was a bit too young to enjoy the halcyon days of adventures games but after watching the opening scene it does look pretty interesting for a 1995 game.

Well, bikers are cool, the atmosphere is cool. But it's not much of an adventure game in the classical sense. Especially not in the 'Lucas Arts wacky humor and satisfying puzzles' sense. So while I did enjoy Full Throttle, I do agree that it is sub-par when compared to the earlier Lucas Arts adventures. It definitely marks a departure from the old virtues and the beginning of Lucas Arts trying something new. ... Without really succeeding. But I can understand people who like it for the atmosphere or coolness factor. Jumping across a chasm with a motorcycle, beating up evil bikers... it is very different, but if you don't expect a Lucas Arts adventure, you can still enjoy the game.

Unfortunately Lucas Arts never returned to it's former greatness. The Dig had promise but turned out to be kind of meh too. Severely lacking in the humor department. Grim Fandango had promise in the humor and wacky story department - but boy, was that game ruined by screwed up controls! The only game almost returning to former glory was Monkey Island 3. That had a terrible art style (I didn't like the comic look at all), but everything else was a worthy successor to the two previous games. But other than that the early 90-es were THE Lucas Arts time.

It was far from being my favorite game in the genre either. There aren't that many bike-centric point & click adventures though, so if you're into bikes I can see the appeal. Sometimes people also just want an "easy" game in between the longer ones. Eg, 1954 Alcatraz has only 3/5 score, yet I still enjoyed it more than I thought I would based on scores alone. I have to say though that for some reason I did prefer the original Full Throttle's art style in ScummVM more than the cartoony Remaster.

1) LucasArts
2) Luke Skywalker
3) A unique protagonist (in p'n'c games at least)
4) Cartoon style
5) Tim Schafer


I do think that you're right, it is somewhat overrated, as there are so many better games out there.
I don't mind about the game length, but I think they took a step back in UI in this game, the verb icons were much simpler and easier to use.

If this game was made by another company, designed by other people, voiced by other actors, I don't think it would stand that well on its own then. So it's very much related to famous names, both companies and people, behind it.

It's still a nice game, so it probably does belong to the best 100 adventure games ever made.


I think it's from a certain point of view a pity that they never made those action-oriented sequels. It would have been nice to see how well the protagonist and setting would hold in an environment that is not the historical point and click environment. With Indiana Jones games that transition was pretty good, as those action adventures are nice enough to play. With Full Throttle, with no movies or anything, just the preceeding adventure game, it would be much more challenging.

Unless some incomplete version some day leaks out, I guess we'll never know for sure.

Setting, music, cartoon-style graphics. It's certainly not the worst Lucasarts title, but definitely not the best P&C adventure game either, it's short (I think you can complete it in 90 minutes or so), puzzles are either easy or obscure, story is so-so and combat is a bit meh. But which other P&C adventure allows you to play a biker who in addition to examining and using objects can also kick everything, just because, and all to the soundtrack of the Gone Jackals?

Anyway, don't be ridiculous calling it one of the worst adventure games ever, just because you're disappointed with it. If you're a fan of the genre you should really know better. It's no comparison to Day of the Tentacle, but there's a shit ton of way, way worse P&C titles out there.

Full Throttle is something that has that 3+ or 7.5/10 written all over it. It has great moments and it has lousy moments and it has charming moments. Add and take and you get a good short game.

So, to answer you question Breja...it's not a problem that the game isn't good enough, your expectations were just too high. To give you a personal comparison. I find Max Payne to be one of the greatest games ever made in every aspect. When I got my hands on Alan Wake I was hoping to feel some of that magic again but I didn't expect it very much because rarely the devs can create similar or better atmosphere for sequels or spiritual sequels of their great first hits. I had a good time with Alan Wake but of course it's was nowhere close to Max Payne's narrative magic or as fun gameplay wise.

What have we learned today, kids? Never go into anything with huge expectations, they tend to ruin your experience.

That actually annoyed me too, since I don't "get" the setting at all. Is this the present, a post apocalyptic future, what? There's TV, shareholder meeting, reporters and stands selling toys, which all points to our present, but there are also weird futuristic cultist bikers routinely ambushing trucks, straight out of Mad Max. Don't get me wrong, I love Mad Max, Fallout, Borderlands etc. but I need a more clearly defined setting to really immerse myself in it. Here I was just looking at it rather confused, not invested at all. I guess we'll just have to disagree here. I found the writing bland and sub-par, jsut like the very cliched characters. That's true, the voice acting is good, although I found Mark Hamill as the bad guy somewhat distracting. He sounds way too much like he does when doing Joker. Guess I'll take your word for it :D Nothing cool about it for me, and it feels like a terrible step down from the far more imaginative adventures before this. I would have loved the Dig's atmosphere and ambitious attempt at a serious sci-fi story if it wasn't for some truly terrible puzzles. Only having three characters in the whole game also was a bit of a problem, made it feel very empty, but at least there was a good reason to have it be like that. Controls and graphics. Transitioning to 3D wasn't kind to the genre, and it's no wonder point & clicks went back to the traditional 2D view after the genre came back from the dead. I absolutely love the cartoony look of Monkey Island 3. That's pretty much how I want every adventure game to look like (unless it clashes with the tone).

I'm curious, if you had to point at one or two games that "killed" the genre, what would those be? Would Full Throttle be one of them, because of how it tried to change the gameplay in... well, let's call it less than succesfull ways (regardless of how much you may personaly enjoy it)? Don't you tell me when I'm being ridiculous! I'll tell you when I'm being ridiculous! Anyway, I wasn't "just disappointed" with it. By the time I was done with the destruction derby part I genuinely hated it. I wasn't having fun at all, it was tedious and boring and I just shamelessly used a walkthrough to be done with it. I know there are worse, more broken, not as well voice acted games out there, but I honestly can't think of a p&c game that I disliked more by thetime I was done with it.

Fair enough.

Out of curiosity, what would you say was the worst LucasArts point & click?

ummm... because people are allowed to have their own opinions about things.

This is basically the same argument as the people that say, "how can anyone like racing games, I think they're garbage." Even if you have a bunch of reasons you think are legitimate for not liking something they are still only opinions, and other people will have other opinions about the same points.

There's only one LucasArts adventure I've never managed to get into enough to play through it, and that's Escape from Monkey Island. Considering that I've only seen the beginning of it, I guess it would be unfair for me to call it the worst, but so far it's definitely my least favorite, due to the derivative humor, inconvenient controls (which were console inspired, as the game was also available for the Playstation - technically it's not quite a P&C anymore), and somewhat bland looking 3D graphics.