Day of the Tentacle Remastered Review

Fine art is always remembered. Classics will never be forgotten. Day of the tentacle Remastered is a slightly updated classic a ton of adventure game fans adore and clinged too growing up and until now. Double Fine Productions gave a fresh coat to a familiar car. Which to us is a great thing. To give you a brief history of the game itself it is the sequel to Maniac Mansion. Which you might of heard of on the NES(Nintendo Entertainment System), or MS-Dos. Or any other platform you can flip off the tip of your tongue professionally. For this review we received a PS4 copy of the game. So we can see how it translates to the console side versus a mouse interface. Awesomely it works wonderful. But we will go over gameplay in a moment for this coverage.

Introductions to the story are in order here. You play as three characters at once, all three in different time frames, being two hundred years in the past, and future from the current time that the game takes place in its core. The story begins with Bernard and friends receiving a distress letter from Green tentacle, warning of Purple tentacle loosing his mind after drinking some toxic ooze pumping from Dr. Fred’s hotel/home. You must control all three characters by swapping to each by pressing their respective avatar icons, or by tapping the directional pad left or right on your console (Vita or PS4) of choice. Or click them with your mouse with PC (at least I think so) in the inventory system. Your goal is to effectively get all of the characters back together and stop Purple Tentacle. The story itself is in tact naturally. So if you are new to the game everything is as it was back in 1993. With enhanced graphics, and developer commentary. The setting and the game it selves plit was pretty short if you already know what to do. Myself personally I was able to clock through the game within 45 minutes aside from restroom breaks and eating something. The story itself was great and still holds up to modern standards. Even if kids do not know what the hell a VHS player or tape is. Their loss I guess.

The gameplay and controls at least for the console side of things handle smooth. With slick shortcuts and guides if you are unsure where items or interactive objects are in the game. You can toggle between the three characters: Hoagie, Bernard, and Laverne by tapping the left and right directional buttons almost on the fly when you need to swap time periods to solve puzzles within the game. You navigate with the foreground and back ground by clicking or tapping X on your game pad or clicking with your left mouse button and interact with whatever is there. Otherwise you just move your character about and can pick up items. A sub selection wheel pops up by tapping Square or whatever the controls are on pc to bring up a nav wheel. Or if you swap to the games on the fly graphical swap mode you can see all of the commands or inventory at your disposal in classic mode. The only thing I found as a drag from the game even to now is the constant trading of items within the game. Sure at the time it was a creative idea per-say but now it just feels gruesome with the constant backtracking to pass along useful items to each character. Which honestly was/is my only complaint about the game. This should not have to be changed, as the game only got a great art improvement, enhanced sound, and control set up. Main streaming it if you will. For a port to the PS4 I was overly happy with the final result. It handled excellent and I did not feel constrained by a controller. As I mentioned before if you know or remember the solutions to everything you will blow past the game quickly. Which is not a huge deal if you enjoy the ride. If you are new to the game it will perhaps last a little longer which never hurts.

In Closing:

With a more then reasonable price you own a pretty awesome, and re-playable adventure game that feels timeless, as its theme. With a added bonus of them keeping the original Maniac Manson game intact within the game via Easter egg you are getting two games for the price of one just about.  A game that was made with love and care seemingly got that same love with a fresh digital brush of paint, and improved controls. I felt like my young self back in 1993 while playing this game again. Sure a few years back I played it by dusting off my old sleeved mail in copy of the game and played it on Scumm but it never hurts to play something you really enjoy a bit more!  If you want a great adventure game to settle down with for a weekend or a weeknight Day of the Tentacle is a charming blast from the past for modern audiences. Aside from the slightly annoying backtracking with trading items between characters I can say the game lacks flaws aside from its short nature. Get it.

Recommended