Toonstruck

I don't really know how to explain Toonstruck to someone who hasn't played it before. The easiest thing to say is "Imagine a Roger Rabbit video game, but not the Roger Rabbit video game that actually exists." But it's really more, "Imagine if Cool World wasn't a commercial and critical flop and got a video game." And I really do think Cool World is the closer comparison. Stuff just happens, for no real reason. It's suprisingly graphic (the corrupted barn scene comes to mind). And it really doesn't make any sense at all when you think about it. For example, if Drew recognizes Flux and Fluffy, wouldn't that imply he made all the inhabitants? But if he did, why doesn't he recognize anyone aside from those two? Regardless, this game is pretty much the game I think of when I think of a cult classic. It has fun writing, puzzles that you will NOT complete without a walkthrough, and sultry hypno furries. What also caught me off guard is just how star-oriented this game is. I mean, everyone knows about Christopher Lloyd, but you also got Ben Stein, Dan Castellaneta, Rob Paulsen (who voiced Bubsy, among less important characters), and even Tim Fucking Curry. tl;dr, if you want a high-brow, smartly written adventure game, this may not be for you. But if you have about five-ish hours to spare, a walkthrough on standby, and a thing for animation, I'd say go for it. wow that was pretentious.

I remember seeing ads for 'Toonstruck' when it first came out. For some reason, it didn't pique my interest. Perhaps it was the uninformative advertising and box art, or perhaps I thought the idea of a real man trapped in a cartoon world like 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' and 'Space Jam' to be overdone. Anyhow, it was not until recently when I started watching and reading PC adventure game retrospectives that 'Toonstruck' caught my attention. It's too bad 'Toonstruck' never caught on with the general audience. It's a good game, and it's not a bad looking game from the mid-1990s. The star-studded cast for both physical and voice acting is appealing, and the colourful presentation is beguiling. The puzzles are a bit on the easy to moderately easy size, with a few obtuse ones that become clear if you follow cartoon logic. With a great cast, nice graphics, mature humour and entertaining inventory puzzles, it's truly a shame that the publisher, Virgin Interactive, gutted the game in half. 'Toonstruck' ended with a cliffhanger. While the ending is serviceable, it just leaves you craving for more and some resolution to the story. Because of that, as fun as 'Toonstruck' is, it is an incomplete gaming experience. Unfortunately, 'Toonstruck 2' is nowhere in sight at the time of this review and we'll just need to keep petitioning or pestering someone to release the assets that were already completed back in the mid-1990s. Until then, 'Toonstruck' is really worth checking out, even if it's not as stellar as adventure titles from LucasArts or Sierra.

Toonstruck runs in ScummVM behind the scenes, so ScummVM hotkeys work. You can see all of them in the README at scummvm.org, but the most useful ones are Ctrl-Alt + and - to increase or decrease the scale factor, and Alt-enter to toggle between full-screen and windowed. So if you have a tiny window in the middle of a black screen, hit Ctrl-Alt + once or twice. It still won't fit perfectly on a modern monitor, but it'll be much better.

For me, this is close to a 5-star game--a real rarity. "Toonstruck" is definitely not what it seems. From the cover art and introductory sequence, I expected a child-friendly, silly-but-simple adventure game. Child-friendly this game is not, and thankfully so. "Toonstruck" uses cartoon logic, great voice acting, and that peculiar mix of FMV and drawing to pull you into a bizarre, perverse world imagined by an animator. The dialogue was funny, puny, and generally enjoyable ("does no one understand the needs of a buxom bovine with a penchant for masochism?!"). The art style was surprisingly fun, and so were the characters. With one exception. It's a matter of preference and not something that destroys the gameplay, but Flux overpowered the game at times, and I would have enjoyed this game significantly more with his absence. My only real complaint with this game is the flow of puzzles. The puzzles were generally challenging (in a good way) and required you to adopt cartoon logic to solve them. At some points, however, you need to find objects that are not easily identified by the cursor, turning certain areas into a pixel hunt. At other times, it's not clear that an object can be reused because it leaves your inventory and looks "embedded" in the areas in which you use it. These interruptions to otherwise fluent gameplay are not dire, however, but merely slow down progress a bit. Final verdict: "Toonstruck" offers a fair challenge, even for not hardcore adventure gamers. The bizarre dialogue and slapsticky sequences make this game a fun way to end the major era of adventure gaming.

Some years ago i played the disc version again What a pain to play the video sequences ^^. I so envy you who can buy it here now. But because the game is sooo good i went throught with it anyway. Adult humour and i think this version is optimized for post 2000 PCs so i assume it will work fine. Buy if you like Point&Click Adventures with lots of humour.