Full Throttle
An old-school SCUMM adventure game by LucasArts, released May 2nd, 1995
You're Ben - beaten, framed for murder and left for dead on the roadside. You've got a lump on your back and a feeling in your gut that the road you're on is about to get a lot rougher.*
An amazing adventure game from back before Lucas jumped the shark, Full Throttle still holds up today thanks to adequate graphics, a great story, and fitting voice and sound work. Full Throttle starred Ben, a member of the Polecats, and a biker who's 100% bad-ass. Ben starts off the game betrayed, and his band has been left for dead. In typical anti-hero fashion (think snarling, take-no-crap biker), Ben must uncover the corruption (a heartless bureaucrat, Adrian Ripburger - voiced beautifully by Mark Hamill) behind the leading 'hog company, Corley Motors. Along the way, he meets the girl, a tough mechanic named Mo, and kicks some biker ass. Very linear, and short (10 hours), but entertaining gameplay situations made it worthwhile:
- An entire section involved cruising down old mine roads in a beastly 'Corley', and beating the crap out of members of different gangs. Eventually, you learned which weapons would work against the different gangs.. some required brute force (chainsaw, crowbar), others a more subtle alternative. (bag of flour)
- A beautifully-done 'destruction derby' with nice arcade action. This was part of a spectacular 'end game', with tons of stuff blowing up.
- Two puzzles involving rigging up your bike for some stunts. In the first, you need your bike to escape the town of Melonweed; in the other, you gotta jump a big ole' gorge, baby.
- Memorable double-crosses and plot twists.
Full Throttle's a worthwhile purchase for anyone dissatisfied with the current crop of adventure games. Its available on the cheap now, and can be manhandled into working with newer systems (use ScummVM).
* From LucasArts' Full Throttle web site
Some info from MobyGames' Full Throttle review, and GameFAQs.