Fast forward 25 odd years, and I gave Full Throttle another crack on the suggestion of a mate, and you know what… I kinda liked it. The puzzles were too easy and I finished the game in under 5 hours without help, but the atmosphere was absorbing and the fact I wanted more says *something* about it. Interface wise, whilst I still didn’t love it, I thought it was actually pretty serviceable. So I vowed to give Sam and Max another go.

Yeah, you pretty much nailed my thoughts. More than cumbersome, I found the interface a distraction, the puzzles were too non-sequitur and at no time did I feel a sense of accomplishment in working anything out… my post-solve reactions spanned from “you’ve got to be kidding” to “I’m sure I tried that” to “meh”. There were several times I was sitting there thinking “So what am I meant to do next?” and when I did stumble across it, it was a case of “But why?”.

I can pinpoint the moment any potential enjoyment of this game was lost, and I just became frustrated by everything it did after that point, and it pretty much covers the gamut of your critique… *** SPOILER ALERT *** I had set up the binoculars in the restaurant to find Frog Rock but Sam kept complaining that things were too small to make out any detail. Hang on, aren’t these things binoculars already – isn’t their purpose to magnify? OK, whatever. I spent 45 mins visiting every place I could to try and find something to solve this “puzzle”. The whole absurdity of the game meant that it could be anything at this point, but nothing surfaced. I thought Shuv-Oohl’s eyeglasses might have been a logical choice, but no. In the end, I had to use a hint and *** FINAL SPOILER ALERT *** it turns out there was a magnifying lens a couple of pixels away from Whack a Rat back at the circus. So my issues here: a) The puzzle itself is inane. There’s nothing clever here, it’s just object hunt padding. b) The interface made finding this really difficult. I’d scanned this location with the eyeball, but often “My little buddy Max” was in the way, so that could be why I missed it Could also be that I thought the open eyeball (which was the size of the entire midway games tent) was still open for Whack a Rat. c) Even when I knew it was there, I looked at the dark blob of pixels and thought it looked more like a hoop you’d throw a ball through…. Why would there be a giant magnifying lens in this location? Is it a typical American funfair thing? Good puzzles should lead you to the vicinity of their solution intuitively. Good puzzles should actually be puzzles.

Anyway. The art style was great for its time, and I get that it would be some people’s kind of humour (I had the odd chuckle, but I became tired of it – I felt it became the game’s crutch), but yeah… this goes into my “Overrated” pile, and I won’t be playing it again, Sam.

In terms of things getting better… there’s not much left, and what’s there isn’t that amazing, so don’t set your hopes too high.