Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (PC, 1993)
Graphics-9 Sound-8 Control-6.5 Challenge-6.5 Story-7.5
Level Design-7 Frustration-7.5 Fun-7 Originality-7
Overall Score-7
+
Switch between three characters on the fly
Great art direction (similar to old 90s Warner cartoons like Roger Rabbit) and animation
Three simultaneous timelines to follow
Some good humour (nonsensical, sarcastic, cartoony - human show, hamster joke)
Good voice acting and dialogue overall (except for the similarity between Hoagie and George Washington and Hoagie and Laverne being kind of annoying at times)
Some memorable NPCs (the IRS, weird Ed, dead Ted, the cleaning maid, purple tentacle, Dr. Fred)
The parallel story depicting Purple Tentacle's actions (and the 'meanwhile' scenes) adds to the sense of time flowing without you moving things along
Some good puzzles (the time-travel based ones, changing the constitution, recording Dr. Fred)
Nice cutscenes
Quick item transfer between the characters
Sound and text speed options
Action hotkeys (can’t reassign them though)
Pop-up text in the UI when hovering the mouse over something that you can interact with
Save anywhere (100 nameable slots in ScummVM)
Volume level options
+/-
You’ll have to let every character possible examine an item to get all helpful clues
Can't interact with everything/do whatever you want to an interactive object ("I'd rather not" - Bernard)
Hoagie sounds like Philip Seymour Hoffman doing a surfer dude
No action sequences (two time-based puzzles though)
No deaths
Some references to the prequel
There is essentially one set route through the game (unlike in the prequel) however a good chunk of the puzzles don't have a set order in which you must do them
Bernard moves into the clock (furthering the storyline in the beginning) without hesitation and similarly puts a hamster in a freezer without thinking (would've made sense after you discover the freezer is still there in the future)
Much of the finale is similarly on rails
Sometimes no comment from the player character when trying to perform an action that you can’t (like talking to objects or looking at the general area)
Easy final battle considering that Purple is supposed to be a genius here
-
Some interface issues (no RMB cycling of commands, can’t skip walking animations?), slow paced (characters need to position themselves in certain ways before they react to an object/scene, no running), too many items and older puzzles to keep track of later on (the game should've let you keep a dialogue/examination log), so-so control over text/dialogue (usually can’t keep lines on as long as you like (using both voice and text) or skip each one properly - you can miss certain details since you can't repeat most dialogue with NPCs and there’s no journal/log feature) - while 'escape' skips in-game cutscenes (not all of them) and ‘.’ skips lines the game sometimes skips more than one scene/line so it's only fully useful after having beaten the game once
Some illogical/far fetched puzzles (a painted red kumquat tree apparently looks just like a cherry tree (to George Washington, who also saw you paint the tree through a window) - this puzzle would've been better if you could switch to Laverne and have a good look at the tree she's hanging in (to see that it's the same tree in all periods), being able to move a bed when other large objects are not movable (at least there's a clue here from Hoagie), Edna/the camera monitoring woman is the only NPC (apart from the obvious scene with Ted on roller skates) that can be pushed (she also disappears from the game after doing so), the ’’Help’’ sign puzzle - if Dr. Fred put it up then why would Bernard say that he doesn't need it without asking? (His ancestor never says he needs an assistant (and when you become one, he doesn't give you any work) and the other items (hammer, battery) could be grabbed easily so why not the lab coat?))
No alternate solutions to puzzles and no alternate endings
Some humour falls flat/feels corny (game is aimed at a younger audience though) and some of the timing and emphasis of the voiced lines are a bit off (sometimes the acting doesn’t quite fit the animation)
Plot oddities (Bernard is surprisingly dumb in the beginning considering the events of the prequel, the tentacle guard conveniently isn't on his spot when you push Ted down the stairs in the future (he's always there otherwise), the finale (missing items that should've been there, PT should've been resized long before the letter was sent, the IRS guys somehow fail to hear your switching of Fred with Ted and they don't get suspicious when you mess up, the IRS guys are still there after you get the diamond until Hoagie and Laverne return, no back story in-game - what are these people's relation to each other?, how did the tentacles write the letter and send it with the hamster?, the three friends barely even question the doctor on the time travelling (for comedy value but still), how does the 'flush' thing work for the time machines if there's no power?, how can the tentacles go back to yesterday by themselves near the end?)
Fairly easy to miss some items (the hammer, the keys in the sleeping man's room, the extension cord - far from the worst pixel hunting I've seen though)
Some tedious parts (getting the hamster to run in the wheel, the skunk cat puzzle, getting Dr. Fred to sign the contract (choose least likely dialogue option twice - then he doesn't read it like he says he always does!))
Your dialogue choices sometimes don't update based on who you've talked to or what you've done prior to the conversation
Can't choose ''use'' on the rope in the pulley as Bernard (need to specifically choose ''pull'' which isn't hinted at)
Uneven voice volume at times
Bugs:
- Hoagie somehow knows Ben Franklin without having met him if you wash the horse wagon before doing so (making him run inside from the storm and making the player miss a conversation with him outdoors - if you do talk to him earlier then Hoagie acts out of character (knows the history of kites?)
- Dialogue bug when chatting with the old hunter tentacle in the future (the game acts as if he said something about the human show after he said something about Laverne being an odd name for a tentacle)
Level Design-7 Frustration-7.5 Fun-7 Originality-7
Overall Score-7
+
Switch between three characters on the fly
Great art direction (similar to old 90s Warner cartoons like Roger Rabbit) and animation
Three simultaneous timelines to follow
Some good humour (nonsensical, sarcastic, cartoony - human show, hamster joke)
Good voice acting and dialogue overall (except for the similarity between Hoagie and George Washington and Hoagie and Laverne being kind of annoying at times)
Some memorable NPCs (the IRS, weird Ed, dead Ted, the cleaning maid, purple tentacle, Dr. Fred)
The parallel story depicting Purple Tentacle's actions (and the 'meanwhile' scenes) adds to the sense of time flowing without you moving things along
Some good puzzles (the time-travel based ones, changing the constitution, recording Dr. Fred)
Nice cutscenes
Quick item transfer between the characters
Sound and text speed options
Action hotkeys (can’t reassign them though)
Pop-up text in the UI when hovering the mouse over something that you can interact with
Save anywhere (100 nameable slots in ScummVM)
Volume level options
+/-
You’ll have to let every character possible examine an item to get all helpful clues
Can't interact with everything/do whatever you want to an interactive object ("I'd rather not" - Bernard)
Hoagie sounds like Philip Seymour Hoffman doing a surfer dude
No action sequences (two time-based puzzles though)
No deaths
Some references to the prequel
There is essentially one set route through the game (unlike in the prequel) however a good chunk of the puzzles don't have a set order in which you must do them
Bernard moves into the clock (furthering the storyline in the beginning) without hesitation and similarly puts a hamster in a freezer without thinking (would've made sense after you discover the freezer is still there in the future)
Much of the finale is similarly on rails
Sometimes no comment from the player character when trying to perform an action that you can’t (like talking to objects or looking at the general area)
Easy final battle considering that Purple is supposed to be a genius here
-
Some interface issues (no RMB cycling of commands, can’t skip walking animations?), slow paced (characters need to position themselves in certain ways before they react to an object/scene, no running), too many items and older puzzles to keep track of later on (the game should've let you keep a dialogue/examination log), so-so control over text/dialogue (usually can’t keep lines on as long as you like (using both voice and text) or skip each one properly - you can miss certain details since you can't repeat most dialogue with NPCs and there’s no journal/log feature) - while 'escape' skips in-game cutscenes (not all of them) and ‘.’ skips lines the game sometimes skips more than one scene/line so it's only fully useful after having beaten the game once
Some illogical/far fetched puzzles (a painted red kumquat tree apparently looks just like a cherry tree (to George Washington, who also saw you paint the tree through a window) - this puzzle would've been better if you could switch to Laverne and have a good look at the tree she's hanging in (to see that it's the same tree in all periods), being able to move a bed when other large objects are not movable (at least there's a clue here from Hoagie), Edna/the camera monitoring woman is the only NPC (apart from the obvious scene with Ted on roller skates) that can be pushed (she also disappears from the game after doing so), the ’’Help’’ sign puzzle - if Dr. Fred put it up then why would Bernard say that he doesn't need it without asking? (His ancestor never says he needs an assistant (and when you become one, he doesn't give you any work) and the other items (hammer, battery) could be grabbed easily so why not the lab coat?))
No alternate solutions to puzzles and no alternate endings
Some humour falls flat/feels corny (game is aimed at a younger audience though) and some of the timing and emphasis of the voiced lines are a bit off (sometimes the acting doesn’t quite fit the animation)
Plot oddities (Bernard is surprisingly dumb in the beginning considering the events of the prequel, the tentacle guard conveniently isn't on his spot when you push Ted down the stairs in the future (he's always there otherwise), the finale (missing items that should've been there, PT should've been resized long before the letter was sent, the IRS guys somehow fail to hear your switching of Fred with Ted and they don't get suspicious when you mess up, the IRS guys are still there after you get the diamond until Hoagie and Laverne return, no back story in-game - what are these people's relation to each other?, how did the tentacles write the letter and send it with the hamster?, the three friends barely even question the doctor on the time travelling (for comedy value but still), how does the 'flush' thing work for the time machines if there's no power?, how can the tentacles go back to yesterday by themselves near the end?)
Fairly easy to miss some items (the hammer, the keys in the sleeping man's room, the extension cord - far from the worst pixel hunting I've seen though)
Some tedious parts (getting the hamster to run in the wheel, the skunk cat puzzle, getting Dr. Fred to sign the contract (choose least likely dialogue option twice - then he doesn't read it like he says he always does!))
Your dialogue choices sometimes don't update based on who you've talked to or what you've done prior to the conversation
Can't choose ''use'' on the rope in the pulley as Bernard (need to specifically choose ''pull'' which isn't hinted at)
Uneven voice volume at times
Bugs:
- Hoagie somehow knows Ben Franklin without having met him if you wash the horse wagon before doing so (making him run inside from the storm and making the player miss a conversation with him outdoors - if you do talk to him earlier then Hoagie acts out of character (knows the history of kites?)
- Dialogue bug when chatting with the old hunter tentacle in the future (the game acts as if he said something about the human show after he said something about Laverne being an odd name for a tentacle)