Day of the Tentacle Remastered

This game comes from the point and click gaming era.  It does its job well, making you point on everything and click it to see what happens.  This game is also focused heavily on humor, so if you're stuck on what to do, think of the most odd-ball, screwy, and funny thing you can do.  Chances are, that is the path you need to take.

The game is set in the 1990's, where a tentacle (that's right, a tentacle) drinks some toxic sludge and evolves, becoming more aggressive, wanting to take over the world, and evolving arms.  Once the main characters realize what is going on, the mad scientist decides to send the trio back one day to turn off the sludge machine in order to save the future.  As the scientist starts his time machine, one of the 3 characters is sent 200 years in the past, one 200 years in the future, and the third one stays in current day.  They traveled to the past and future (respectively) in time traveling porta potties.  The Port-a-Johns themselves don't work, but the characters can send items back and forth using them.  This makes sending text books, teeth, and exploding cigars through time possible.  

The main challenge in this game is trying to figure out how to progress.  The challenges are not normally solved by easy means.   For example, in the past there are 2 twins that are artists.  If you change out the left-handed hammer for a right-handed hammer, the artist wont be able to work on a carving he's working on.  He feels like he's a failure, so the twins change places.  Another challenge is getting rid of a tree in the future.  In order to do this you will need to paint kumquats red.  You then challenge George Washington (the president) to chop down one more 'cherry' tree.  Once he chops it down, it helps the girl in the future.

Once the girl in the future is free, she gets captured and put in a kennel with other 'wild' humans.  Tentacles have taken over the world at this point, so humans are pets.  In order to wander freely you'll need to get to the doctor's office, take the tentacle anatomy paper, send it to the past, and have the flag changed to a wind sock.  After some shenanigans the girl in the future gets the wind sock flag and wears it like a costume, making her look like a tentacle as well.  Once she has the costume, she is free to wander the building.

Later in the game you will need to win a contest (I found it easier to not question the logic of this game).  To do so you would need to gather wet spaghetti, a fork, a set of dentures from a horse, roller skates, and a laughing box from an inflatable clown.  Many of the items are gathered by other characters in the other time periods.  At one point the character in the present puts a sweater in a dryer and it finishes drying in with the character in the future.

I have found that without a walkthrough I would be so confused with this game that I wouldn't want to continue playing it.  Without the walkthrough there is no way to understand what the next step would need to be.  I personally wouldn't have understood to paint kumquats red in order to have George Washington chop down the tree.  Many of the options aren't made available until one thing has happened, like a trigger that allows everything else to progress.  It makes some of the puzzles infuriating while making others just plain fun.  

One fun part of the remastered edition is that you can play in the original graphics if you would like.  I preferred playing in the new graphics, as the old graphics made it too difficult to see much of the game.  It is playable in the original graphics, because I played and beat it with the original graphics when I was a kid.  The rest of the game just seemed difficult for the sake of being difficult.  Trying to figure out where to go next when lost either requires a walkthrough or requires you to click everything with everything.

Overall this game is a good game to get on sale.  It was a lot more frustrating than I remember back in the day, but it would definitely be worth the time and cost if found on a sale.  The gameplay is decent, the music is fun, the controls can be a little frustrating, but in the end its worth the purchase.