Ben, the ubiquitous protagonist of Full Throttle, is not your typical adventure hero - he sports a Fred Flintstone-esque five-o'clock shadow and takes no guff. When Ben needs some information from a body-pierced bartender with a bad attitude, he doesn't take No for an answer; he grabs the barkeep by the nose ring and gives it a not-so-friendly yank. When he needs to open a door, he doesn't look for a key; he smashes down the door with a well-placed kick of his massive boot.
Make no mistake, Full Throttle is one hard-edged adventure, depicting a Blade Runneresque future filled with corruption, conspiracy, and badass bikers. Ben is one such badass, and he's in a world of trouble, having been framed for the murder of a motorcycle magnate. To clear his name, he has to track down devious businessman/weasel Adrian Ripburger (voice by Mark Hamill, a k a Luke Skywalker) while avoiding the fuzz. On the road to Ripburger, Ben encounters such diverse obstacles as a junkyard dog with an appetite for sheet metal, a demolition derby featuring several demented contestants, and the Poyahoga Gorge, which has no bridge but which must still be jumped.
Full Throttle is one of the most movielike games I've ever played - and it manages this without crappy full-mo video. Instead, the designers combined 2-D hand-drawn animation with 3-D-rendered graphics, giving Full Throttle the look and feel of a computerized toon show.
The game also stirs the senses with a soundtrack of ambient background music and hard-core metal by The Gone Jackals (whoever these guys are, they rock hard). Best of all, the easy-to-use interface appears on the screen only when you need it, allowing you to enjoy the killer visuals and concentrate on solving puzzles.
And therein lies the only ping in Full Throttle's engine. The game just doesn't last long enough; it sacrifices longevity for an involving story. Usenet denizens brag of completion times of 8 to 10 hours, and even my feeble puzzle-solving skills took me through the game in 12. But I'll take the short but very sweet Full Throttle over a 50-hours-to-finish yawn-athon any day!
Full Throttle for PC CD-ROM: US$54.95. LucasArts: (800) 782 7927, +1 (415) 721 3300, fax +1 (408) 644 2025, e-mail 75300.454@compuserve.com.
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