Retro Review - Full Throttle

Throughout this time I've done some reviews of graphic adventures, most of them under the label of the great LucasArts, which was a video game developer that has in its list of titles many of the best games of this genre, as they are: Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, among many other games. Although there are also other excellent graphic adventures from other companies such as Broken Sword, today I will again talk about a game of this wonderful genre and that likewise, LucasArts was under its creation.

Today's Retro Review is about: Full Throttle.

LucasArts in his graphic adventures, has always stood out for creating a fairly good and humorous plot, and that despite not having extremely deep plots and unexpected plot twists, are stories good enough and well worked, to be totally entertaining.

Full Throttle tells us the story of Ben, he is the leader of a motorcycle gang, a gang full of the typical rough characters who look for a fight at the slightest provocation. The world of Full Throttle is quite similar to Mad Max, although not apocalyptic, but in aesthetics it has quite a lot of similarities, since it is a bit of a desert world and we have to travel great distances to reach a certain point.

Ben's gang is called the "Polecats" and at the moment they are not having much monetary income, they are practically bankrupt, so one day, two important characters in this story appear before them: Malcolm Corley, who is the director of the only motorcycle manufacturer in the country and his evil partner: Adrian Ripburger, the latter is considered the villain of the story. Adrian Ripburger offers our protagonist, Ben, a job as an escort. The job is simply to have Ben and his gang escort them to a company shareholders' meeting, but Ben refuses to do that job, so Ripburger is annoyed by that fact and takes Ben unawares and knocks him out. He then deceives the rest of the gang by telling them that Ben accepted the escort job and went ahead to plan the travel route.

Soon after Ben wakes up and discovers that all the members of the gang have been deceived by Ripburger, so our protagonist decides to go after them as this villain plans to frame them for the murder of Malcolm Corley, because Ripburger plans to kill him to keep the company.

As expected from LucasArts, once again we are faced with a graphic adventure, which looks like a cartoon, so Full Throttle has a style quite typical of this company that is characterized by looking like an interactive animated film. But of course, obviously with an outstanding drawing quality, worthy of the quality that in its time, LucasArts, reflected in most of its titles.

Full Throttle uses the old method of recreating backgrounds with pre-rendered scenarios, but with an excellent level of drawing and details on screen, although in many occasions we will see some objects in 3D, which together with the 2D that is also implemented in this title, really make a good combination, but this is due to the excellent drawing of the scenarios.

In the same way, the character design is very outstanding, the character sprites are big and despite the antiquity of this video game, these designs present a good amount of details and definition in the layout of their designs. After many years, they brought out a remastered version, which greatly improves what was previously seen in this videogame, although in the same way, the 1995 version maintains its old-fashioned charisma and can still easily be played despite the fact that its graphics are from a fairly old era of videogames, but that's what made LucastArt's games good, which perhaps in terms of playable mechanics, can be considered obsolete, in terms of graphics they still maintain their personality.

LucasArts never disappoints when it comes to sound, so in Full Throttle we will be able to witness a high quality soundtrack and, of course, due to the theme of this videogame, its soundtrack is composed of songs from the musical genres: Hard Rock and even Heavy Metal, musical genres that fit perfectly with the whole plot of this title, but above all, with the personality of our main protagonist. In general, the soundtrack is a marvel. In the same way, Full Throttle has voices for each character and obviously they do an exceptional job, each voice fits very well with the personality of the characters and as a curious fact that I found out when I played this title again recently, is that Mark Hamill himself, known for having played the iconic Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars saga, played the villain of this videogame, I was really surprised when I found out about this, since the first time I played that title, I didn't notice this curiosity.

Video Author Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracks

In terms of playable mechanics, Full Throttle has not changed the typical system that everyone knows and that was implemented all the graphic adventures of that time, the well-known SCUMM system, which consists of the actions that our character can perform, being presented in a "list" of verbs such as: TALK, TAKE, LOOK, GO, among others, thus simplifying the game system.

However, in Full Throttle, unlike other games of the same style like the previous mentioned Monkey Island or even, another classic of the graphic adventures, like Gabriel Knight, I replace the system of "Verbs" and add icons that represent the same actions, which even more simplify the action menu, but make it more stylized, besides that on screen will only be occupied by our character, the mouse cursor and the SCUMM menu when it is going to be used, unlike the other graphic adventures that these menus occupy a part of the screen.

Otherwise Full Throttle is a typical graphic adventure like others, in which our job is to go through scenarios, obtain objects that can serve us in the future, solve puzzles, get information, but unlike other games, in Full Throttle we also have the option to hit some characters, which is not surprising due to the theme and argument of this title. However, sometimes the gameplay will change completely, as there will be driving sections and even motorcycle fights, so Full Throttle adds action to its gameplay, which is quite rare in a game of this genre, but quite fun and these driving stages are not difficult at all.

Full Throttle is an excellent graphic adventure, worthy of being in the lists of the best graphic adventures, even though for current times its mechanics are quite obsolete, but still it is a highly recommended title and it is a perfect game for those who want to enter the world of graphic adventures.