Full Throttle: Remastered (PC) - Part 2

Congratulations, you've discovered the second and final part of my epic two-part Full Throttle: Remastered article! If you're looking for the first part, it's right here: PART ONE.

I spent all of part one just getting out of the town at the start, but part two covers the entire rest of the game, so if you haven't played the game before and have any interest in going into it without the plot and puzzles ruined, it's probably best not to read anything below this SPOILER WARNING.

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Previously on Full Throttle (Remastered):

Ben is the leader of a biker gang called the Polecats, but right now he's stuck in a town called Melonwood while they've been tricked into escorting the boss of Corley Motors and his evil executive Ripburger to a stockholders meeting. Not the worst fate imaginable, except they're going to be ambushed by Ripburger along the way as part of his plan to seize control of the company, and Ben is the only one who can save them!

First through I have to get past these hovercops. They're still a bit pissed off that I set off the gas tower alarm and stole their fuel.

Fortunately resolving this problem was a puzzle I could solve myself. I went back to the gas tower, set off the alarm again to lure them all away from the road, and Ben was finally able to ride out of town and catch up with the other Polecats!

Unfortunately the ambush was never for them, as it turns out that Ripburger was actually after Corley. The poor guy gets attacked on the way out of the toilet while he's trying to get his fly up, and his assailant then proceeds to beat him to death with a stick.

And that photographer from Melonwood was there to catch it all on film!

Ripburger and his goons catch her and confiscate her camera, but she's able to make a getaway and they're far too busy to destroy all the photographic evidence. They've got to rush off and deal with the rest of the Corley family!

Ben arrives just in time to scare Ripburger away before he's able to give Corley the finishing blow, but too late to save him. The old man only has just enough time left to give the hero a few last words to keep the plot moving and explain Ripburger's plan for Corley Motors.

He's going to start making minivans instead of motorcycles! Minivans! That means the end of American manufactured bikes altogether. The biker apocalypse. The stakes cannot be higher.

Oh plus Maureen is his secret daughter and his true heir. So that's who Ripburger's goons are going to kill next! It's a bit of a shame really, because Corley wants Ben to find her and get her to take over the company.

It's a bit of a coincidence that Ben just happened to meet Corley and his daughter on the same day, making him the one person actually capable of fulfilling the man's last wishes. But it seems like there's only around a dozen people in this part of the country so I suppose it makes sense.

Ben's way too late to save Maureen in time, but she spots her assassin reflected in a shiny toaster and gets the drop on him by dropping the lift he's standing on. Fate is definitely on Maureen's side today, as she also finds the photographer's camera on him, and pockets the undeveloped film of her dad's murder without even knowing what it is.

So now Ben's back in this damn town again for the third time, checking for clues.

There's no sign of Maureen or the goon, but he does find a familiar photo of Maureen in front of a mink ranch lying on the ground. She said she went there whenever she needed to get away for a while.

This got me wondering though, what happens if you decide not to talk to Mo about the photo? Does it change the story?

So I replayed this whole section of the game without clicking on the photo on her wall, and after collecting all the bike parts Ben finally decided to look at it himself. The game's happy to let you discover information and trigger events all by yourself through investigation and conversation, but if you miss or choose to ignore things it'll make sure the story ends up on track regardless. That's smart game design I reckon.

Anyway, I don't know where this Mink Ranch is, but I've got two directions out of town so I picked one and hit the road! The road was blocked by a police road block, so Ben had to turn around and go back to Melonwood again for the fourth time.

Going the other way brought me back to the Kick Stand, which makes sense. Fortunately my front wheel didn't fall off this time, unfortunately the two occupants are being less than useful and it turns out my whole gang has been framed for Corley's murder. Yay, now I'm a fugitive.

I tried chatting with Emmet (the knife guy) for a bit, trying to convince him to smuggle me past the police in his giant truck, or at least let me have a go with the knife, but he's being a dick. Why are Mark Hamill's characters always mean to me in this game?

So I checked the walkthrough again and learned that there's a secret knife minigame if you pester him about ten times, just repeating the same lines over and over again.

I was actually doing really well at this until I realised I didn't know what I was supposed to do, and ended up accidentally stabbing him a few times while trying to quit. I checked the walkthrough again and you're supposed to copy the pattern he uses at the start, so I did! Didn't get me past any road blocks.

So gave up and checked the walkthrough for the 15,000th time and it told me to go around back to the dumpsters because the photographer is hiding in them now.

C'mon game, if you want me to check a location I've already finished with you've got to give me a reason first! She's trying to get Ben's attention, so why didn't they make it so you can hear her going "Pssssssssssst!" from the moment you park your bike outside the Kick Stand? Hunting down NPCs you've got no reason to look for in places you've got no reason to visit isn't gameplay.

I got a fake id from the photographer and gave it to Emmet in exchange for him getting me past the police. This way we can both get where we need to go.

Though Ben has to ride in the engine compartment, which doesn't seem entirely safe to me. Don't worry, we're smuggling his bike through as well... buried in the fertiliser he's hauling.

The plan works and he gets to the Mink Ranch, but then Ben's new friend Emmet becomes his new nemesis by stealing his bike's fuel line to replace his own and driving off!

There was a replacement hose in the Mink Ranch (plus a tire iron, finally a new item I can keep!), but Maureen made a break for it while Ben was busy and escaped using her nitro. So now I need to chase her.

I'm sorry I'm writing more about the story than the gameplay at this point, but this is what Full Throttle's like! There's a reason it's so short.

The two of them run into Emmet's truck again along the way, who tries to run over Ben (what a dick). He's soon got problems of his own though, when a high tech biker gang shows up to hijack his cargo.

Emmet disconnects his trailer and drops it into one of them, smashing through his bike, but they retaliate by firing a timed explosive at his cab and blowing it up. Blowing a whole bridge up in fact. RIP Emmet.

LucasArts were getting pretty ambitious with their cutscenes here, especially considering this was only just after Sam & Max. This is why Double Fine chose to leave the game until they'd already remastered Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango: because it was the toughest challenge.

By the way, the game comes off as very Mad Max at times, and there's even a song about the apocalypse, but it's apparently not post-apocalyptic. It's just set in a barren and abandoned part of America, during a time where cars hover, and bikes are rare and elaborate.

So someone will likely come and rebuild this bridge eventually... just not in the next couple of hours. Which is a bit of a problem for me seeing as Maureen's on the other side of it, along with Ripburger and his shareholders meeting.

I've reached gameplay again, but now I'm stuck driving down two roads: a stretch of highway with the Mink Ranch on one end and the ravine on the other end, and a circular Mine Road that intersects a couple of times along the way.

I'm just steering the bike with the mouse and clicking the button to take an exit when I reach it.

I went to the end of the highway next to the ravine and Ben automatically parked his bike, so I figured I might as well check this sign.

Turns out it was about all the people who've tried to jump the ravine in the past, and it tells me the three things I need to collect in order to do it myself. Good thing I clicked it really, despite it being entirely nondescript and out of the way. Unfortunately one of the items I need is being held by a biker gang, so I need to do more bike fights!

Even fans of the game point to this as being one of the weaker parts, and they ain't lying. It's not just the fact that I'm just clicking the mouse until one of us falls off; there's also a bit of an insult sword fighting thing going on, where I need to drive around in circles fighting bikers over and over to collect what I need to counter them.

Except here I'm not accumulating quips, I'm acquiring weapons, and to learn which are effective against which enemy I have to try them all until one of them works. It's just time wasting trial and error bullshit and I eventually just checked the walkthrough again to be done with it.

Original graphics

Turns out I had to use the fertiliser from Emett's wrecked truck to one-shot the chainsaw woman to get the chainsaw, then use the chainsaw to get the wooden plank, and then I could use the wooden plank against the guy with the special googles... but only when he was driving over a bumpy surface.

There's no way to die here, you just pick yourself back up again, so it's not as bad as it could've been. Plus you can apparently auto-win the fights by pressing Shift+V, but I never tested that myself. I only tested my patience.

ONE RAVINE JUMP LATER

Damn, Corley Motors looks kind of oppressive. Say what you like about old Malcolm Corley, but the guy sure liked exhaust pipes.

I guess I'm around two thirds of the way through the game now and my options are not abundant. I can fail to get in the front door, I can ride up to a dead end, or I can go down to a guy selling wind-up bunnies.

I've noticed I've been getting a bit negative, so here's a nice picture of me swiping a cute bunny right in front of the clueless shopkeeper, and the matching achievement to go with it.

I love the expression on his little bunny face. It's like he knows I'm going to use him to clear out a minefield.

Well that didn't work. I unleashed a whole box load of the clockwork rabbits to march across the mines but they're all getting blown up together so they run out too fast. Seems like I have to drop the whole box, rush to pick them all up again before they hit a mine, then let them go one at a time.

Because this game's a pain in the assssssssssssssssssss.

LATER

Okay I've found Maureen and I think I'm getting close to convincing her (and her friends) that Ben's not the one who killed her father.

I told her what was on the film she'd taken and she was able to get them developed to reveal the real killer. Now we just need to come up with a plan to take down Ripburger and put her in charge of the company.

SOON

Original graphics

Man I hate this game. I hate this game so much right now.

There were like two puzzles to solve on this side of the ravine before I got locked into the next bit of action gameplay, and I must have blocked this demolition derby minigame from my mind entirely because I had no idea it was coming.

I'm in the red car and my objective is to slam it into Maureen's yellow car so that we both blow up (it's a crucial first step in achieving our goals). Trouble is that Ripburger's goons are driving the blue car and they're making it impossible for me to reach her.

This is already bad enough for Ben as he hates cars! Now he has to solve this weird puzzle with bad mouse controls. Oh hang on, I can use the arrow keys instead, so that helps a bit. I can also skip it all with a cheat, but that would be cheating.

I get that I have to stun the orange car by driving up a ramp and landing onto it, then shove it into the right position (for reasons), but that bloody blue car keeps knocking it awake so it drives off again. It's really frustrating!

A LITTLE LATER.

Speaking of frustrating, I had to get a shot of the legendary wall-kicking puzzle that comes right afterwards. I'm switching back to the original graphics for a moment so you can see how it looked back in the day.

You have to wait until all the dials on the left show a black mark, then kick the wall in the right place to open a secret passage into Corley Motors. The clue is that Maureen used to come here as a kid and remembers that you kick when the crack is at eye-level, but the crack runs across the whole wall!

People used to resort to solving it through brute force, clicking every spot on the wall, despite the dial delay being added to make that method unbearable. The correct solution, is to estimate how tall Maureen would've been when she was a child and click the base of the wall where the crack is the correct height. This puzzle is absolute bullshit.

Fortunately the graphics were changed for the Remastered version to highlight the correct rock, making this perhaps the easiest puzzle for me in the game so far.

Though the safe code puzzle that comes after has to be a close runner up. You're shown a series of numbers earlier in the game and told that there's a key there. You put the number with the right number of digits into the safe here, congrats you've solved the puzzle. Sucks for you if you didn't write them down though!

Anyway, I exposed Ripburger at the shareholders meeting and saved Corley Motors. Happy ending! Didn't even take much to do it, I just broke one machine and put the evidence into the other one. I was expecting some puzzles here.

But wait, there's more!

Ripburger is not handling his defeat gracefully.

Mark Hamill voices three characters in this game and now two of them have tried to run Ben over with one of these trucks. Do I have to worry about Todd coming after me for revenge in a third truck later? I did steal bike forks from his junk yard, leave his dog hanging from crane and kick a door into his face.

I really struggled with this bit and I don't feel all that good about that seeing as I have like two things to click on and three items in my inventory. And one of them's a bike fighting weapon I can never use! I should've solved this through trial and error in 30 seconds.
 

First I opened the grille and tried shoving my tire iron in the fan. When that didn't work I threw the box of bunnies in there (Ben decided to throw each of them in individually so it took a while for them all to be shredded.)

At this point I was entirely out of options, so I checked the walkthrough and it said 'open the panel' Can you see a panel here? Turns out the thing he's leaning on folds up. It does get highlighted with a yellow box in the Remastered version if you press the button to show interactive objects, but I figured the box was for the fan.

Then I ran out of time, and the truck went over a cliff and exploded, killing Ben. In a LucasArts adventure game. It just resets though... replaying the last cutscene all over again.

I eventually made it to the next bit, which turned out to be a computer menu! I just have to go through all the options and find something that a: will save me and b: still works on this broken vehicle. So it's trial and error with a time limit.

I get why the timer's here, as some players feel that it's ridiculous when you can just hang around in an urgent situation for as long as you need. It kind of kills the urgency. But in practice it means I keep getting interrupted by a death animation before getting to try again, and that's not very tense or realistic either! It's just frustrating.

Here's another fun fact about Emmet and Ripburger: not only are they both antagonists voiced by Mark Hamill who tried to murder Ben with a truck, but they both end up getting killed at the exact same ravine!

Though first I had to solve a second trial and error computer menu puzzle!

And here's the last puzzle in the game, presented with classic graphics so you can see how it used to look. The place is about to explode and the only option is to run to the right, but if you do that you die a fiery death.

I'll switch to remastered mode so you can see the hidden solution:

Oh hang on, it's still pretty hard to see.

What they did was hide Ben's bike off screen so you had to try walking left to reveal it. Even though you're already on the left side of the screen. The remastered mode is widescreen so they couldn't pull this trick anymore. Here's what they've done instead: they made it so it doesn't show up when you press the 'highlight usable objects' button.

The designers really wanted you to blow up once before noticing the bike was there.

Box art moment!

Though even when you survive it all ends in tragedy, as Ben slips away from the woman he loves to let her run the company they both love, because he loves his bike just a little bit more. Or he just hates the way people keep calling her up all the time.

The end.


CONCLUSION

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This isn't the way I saw this going.

I figured a Full Throttle article would bring a jolt of positivity to my website. I'd show off the pretty visuals, talk about how great the voice acting is, make a joke about that terrible secret passage puzzle near the end, and everyone reading would be satisfied that I correctly identified the good game as being good.

But then I got stuck in the incredibly simple puzzles in the town at the start and things just got worse from there. Every time I thought I was past the bad bit of the game, the next part was somehow an even bigger pain in the ass. The tiny town turned out to be 33% of the puzzles, then the middle third of the game was trial and error road brawling! I expected to get back to solving puzzles after that, but after swiping a bunny and getting past the minefield it was demolition derby time! Then there was the notorious secret passage puzzle. Then I entered a code, flicked two levers and it was time for the epic showdown on the truck. More incredibly simple puzzles, except now with a time limit!

That's the worst part of this game for me: how miserable it was to get stuck on basic problems over and over again. If it was all overly elaborate 'car hair moustache' puzzles then that would be one thing, but it's the exact opposite to that. I got tripped up in the town because I assumed the the car stacking and the chimney must be used for something and didn't try the most simple thing first. I got stuck at the Kick Stand afterwards because it didn't occur to me that the solution was just 'look around the dumpsters again'. And I got stuck at the end because I couldn't see the engine panel or the bike. The game's so simple and items are so rare that trying everything on everything else can be your first move, so I understand why the designers wouldn't want that to work, but I was still frustrated. A couple of hints to nudge me in the right direction would've been nice!

I was going to mention that there's just five people in the game you can have a conversation with, the same as in the Scumm Bar at the start of Monkey Island (if you count the dog), but then I remembered a sixth. That doesn't change the point I want to make though, which is that Ben's a biker, not a talker, so if going down weird dialogue trees is what you're into, this isn't your game either. It's a bit of a lonely empty world when you're not beating up bikers on the Mine Road. And the action sequences are so bad that everyone already agrees with me about them.

It's not hard to see why Full Throttle has so many fans, as it's a great looking adventure game with a fantastic atmosphere and a compelling story. It's somewhere between Monkey Island and The Dig in tone, as it's still funny (I don't think Tim Schafer's capable of not being funny), but it's not a wacky cartoon where people break the fourth wall and can survive being shot out of cannons. They don't survive being beaten to death or dropped off cliffs either, it's pretty brutal.

But I got no fun out of the gameplay and I'm not sure this is a 'me' problem this time around. Zelda and Resident Evil, sure I just couldn't get into them, same with Alien: Isolation and Crusader Kings II, but this game had every chance to win me over and it failed. I think the game's badly designed and if you took out the bike fights it'd be ridiculously short too. I'm not saying it's a terrible game, I'm not putting it on the level of something like Dark Seed or Curse of Enchantia, or one of the impossible Sierra titles, but for a 90s LucasArts adventure this is really disappointing.

The remastering's pretty great though.

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Now it's your turn to say bad things about Full Throttle. Or maybe nice things! Do you think I'm wrong about the game or has time really worn away its shine?

Also, do you reckon you know what the next game is going to be? Demonstrate your superior game identification skills by taking a guess.