[Captain Hero]

Oh boy! A new reader review. Who is this guy writing? I don't know him. Who are you, Captain Hero?

Well, I have been playing Adventure Games since...I don't remember. Ah...now I remember. Transylvania. On my first girlfriends Apple II+. Wow. Soon after my best friend got an Apple IIc. Then I got my own a year or so later. I remember playing Kings Quest and the first couple Space Quests, the Scott Adams adventures, most of the Infocoms...just a lot of stuff.

I purchased my first PC in 1994. The first game to hit the CD-Rom was Day of the Tentacle!

I was amazed by it and had a wonderful time playing and so have chosen it to be my first game review. The fact that it is arguably the best point and click adventure game to date has a little something to do with it, too. Please beware as there may be spoilers.

These reviews are usually broken into different areas: Gameplay, Story, Audio, Video with a conclusion thrown in. Sometimes the Characters are graded. Other times the Box Art, and in even rarer cases the developers shoe size.

To be fair, this game was initially released on floppies with no voice acting. This game truly lies on the hump between the two genres. So, for starters:

Story:
A tentacle created by mad scientist Dr. Fred decides to eat some chemicals and goes on a messed up power trip. He seems to think he can take on the world just because he sprouted a couple armlike things.
Enter Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne. I have no idea why they are hanging out with one another or if they are roommates or what; it is never explained. They are summoned to Dr. Freds mansion to try to stop the evil tentacle. Soon they find themselves in three different time periods of the same house trying to reach the day before they left to prevent purple tentacle from ever drinking the toxic waste in the first place.

Graphics:
This is a cartoony game. A well drawn cartoon will hold up over time. At the time, this game looked fantastic. Nowadays it still looks pretty good, just dated. The animations are well done with a lot of variety.

Sound:
Even today, the voice acting is very strong. The voices match the characters almost perfectly. The only complaint I would have is that Hoagie's voice sounds more like a big buff surfer than a scummy roadie.

Gameplay:
All that stuff up there, it doesn't make that much of a difference if this part of the game sucks. Fortunately this part does not suck. In fact, there has never been another game that shined as brightly in this key area.
Once the game really gets going, you have a ton of puzzles to overcome. Hoagie gets sent 200 years into the past, Laverne 200 into the future and Bernard just wanders around in the present. Things that are changed in the past can change the future. You can also exchange items between the characters by sending them through time.
The puzzle difficulty is not overly great as hints abound. You will rarely find yourself completely stuck because there are so many items and obvious puzzles to work on.

Favorite puzzle: ***SPOILER***
There are so many to choose from. Many of which are very clever. My favorite is painting kumquats red and then socially engineering our first president into chopping the tree down which then removes the tress from the future and frees up Laverne.

Least favorite puzzle:
The final one where you talk to Purple and make him shoot himself. So so lame. What an awful way to end such a great game. Speaking of that, the whole thing with the three characters running around together was pretty stupid, too. After a dumb final puzzle a really dumb final joke didn't help matters any.

Conclusion: If you haven't played it, just do so. You suck until you do. If you have played it, then you don't suck, you rool. This is among the best computer games ever, let alone adventure games.

[Terramax]

This game irratated me. Pile of sh-- no, I won't go into that. Seriously, I found this game overhyped, humour that not even my 9 year-old sister found funny and the graphics! brrrrr *shivers*

I've loved most other Tim Schafer stuff, but I've found his earlier work, if not LucasArts themselves completely overrated. Downhill from here? Better than Broken Sword, Discworlds, Still Life, Ankh and the like? That is illogical captain.

[Junkface]

Even if you didn't connect with its tone or writing I think you have to acknowledge the elegance of the design. As far as I'm concerned the only games you list that should be allowed to even be mentioned in the same post as DOTT are Broken Sword and Discworld Noir. And even they aren't in the same class.

[Boneho Chane]

Day of the Tentacle was the first adventure game I could consider "perfect". I played it after as soon as I finished Grim Fanadago, and was like, woah, this blows GF out the water! Extremely well designed puzzles through-out the entire game, all of which were very fun. In fact this is the only game I can really say I beat without any help whatever. I had so much fun figuring out what to do, and I never once got stuck. It also had me laughing the entire time. The quote in my signature is the one that had me laughing the hardest.

[nonax]

Like captain hero I am still waiting for a game as splendid as DOTT. Unlike Grim Fandango the odd and sometimes absurd elements work perfectly in this game.
Do you remember
The cow swaying its arm and say drat in the introduction film?
The left handed hammer? (my favorite!)
The clapping teeth?
The pile of coins that went into the washing machine?
A vacuum cleaner as institutional right?
Tarting murphies law to summon the rain?

Man, it still has me laughing!

[JackBurtonMe]

Fate of Atlantis and both MI and MI2 are considerably better than DOTT.

Much better storylines, much better atmosphere. The puzzles are also far superior. The bit in DOTT where you have to swap loads of items through the time travel toilets was just a pain.

DOTT is a good game but nowhere near the best adventure ever.

[ozzie]

The bit in DOTT where you have to swap loads of items through the time travel toilets was just a pain.

Ehm, next time use the item on the icon of the person you want it to "flush" to. Much easier and less time consuming!

I think it's silly to argue which game is better with titles of such quality. But for me DoTT had the best humor and some of the best puzzles.