I ran out and bought this at release as it was very well received in magazines but was disappointed. It aims for the zaniness of something like Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max, but with an adult twist. Unfortunately, this attempt at "edgy" humour falls flat on its face and what you are left with is an incomprehensibly unfunny adventure. There's nothing special in the puzzles or hidden anywhere else in the game either - it's a poorly-assembled mess that almost never inspires interest in its ham-fisted, tiresome and cringe-worthy proceedings. I did manage to complete it and would not consider it very difficult. Remember getting stuck in a number of places where poor design and over-long animations made it a lot more cumbersome, tedious and infuriating to try possible solutions. To this day Toonstruck is hidden at the back of my collection - sharing a corner with Ultima IX. It was a lesson to my sixteen year-old self to be more discerning in future. Since it flopped very badly it is sometimes held up as a sign of the beginning of the end for the once-mighty adventure genre - a big-budget game that got very good reviews but still failed. To me it was more a failure by the reviewers to spot an absolute stinker.
This game has a lot of problems. I never played it without the restored content mod... and I would suggest that it's not worth it as the game was released a year early by Lucasarts and was never finished. The modders could only do so much with the cut content and the result is that the game is still not, and will likely never be finished. From a writing and story point of view, however, this is a masterpiece. The restored content mod leaves it in a respectably complete state. The only thing I think that needs to be done to make it complete (other than if Obsidian finished it in their spare time) is to balance the gameplay. In fairness, the game's early promise eludes to something far more complete than Bioware's effort: it even has a proper crafting system. I really enjoyed this and spent ages optimising my gear even though there was no need since the game presents practically no challenge, even on the highest difficulty level. It's a tragedy, really - the earlier parts of the game that are more complete are very well done, the rest of it (thanks to the modders) hangs together respectably... but the difficulty levels were never balanced. I suspect this and everything else that would normally happen towards the end of a project just never happened. While I recommend the restored content mod, I strongly suggest skipping the M4-78 one. If you install this you must plod around an empty planet doing dull and mindless fetch quests for far too many hours. I actually removed this and loaded an earlier save file just to escape. The quality level is unacceptably low. I suppose the modders did try but this area was cut for a very good reason - almost none of it was done! All the rough edges aside, I still highly recommend this game. Maybe it deserves full marks, but its flaws aren't insignificant. The story is truly sublime, however. The very pinnacle of Star Wars, this should be made into a stand-alone film. The musical score almost deserves this on its own!
I've played a lot of games on a lot of systems (computers and consoles) in what's now almost thirty years. This is still my favourite game of all time. I'm partial to graphic adventures, but very much wasn't when I sat down to play it. Don't think an Indiana Jones game could be any better - its story, locations and main characters top any of the films. Shame this wasn't Indy 4! As an adventure game it's better than most others in several quantifiable ways: * Many puzzles have more than one solution. * There are three completely different paths through the game. You choose which one to take and they're all entertaining and worthwhile. The opening and finale are the same regardless of path, but the unique part is a significant portion of the game (maybe more than half of it). * The game is very long. There's loads if it but I was dismayed when I did finally finish it. One of the weaknesses of adventure games is replayability but this one has it in spades. I rarely replay any game, but I played this one far more than three times as I wanted to try and find every possible puzzle solution and attain the full amount of IQ (Indy Quotient) points. Never did get them all, think I was one puzzle short when I called it a day. Another problem people can have with adventures is getting stuck. Using a guide just ruins the game (in my opinion) so it's good that there are often multiple solutions to puzzles in this. You'll still get stuck a lot as it's not easy. Makes it a great multiplayer game as having a second or third set of eyes can help. To sum it all up: the music, settings, action - everything you get up to are in step with you being Indy in one of the films. Sophia is also the best Indy heroine. I like all the paths but the one with Sophia has to win out as what Indy film worth its salt would be without a feisty and impossible, but beautiful and irresistible sidekick? Turn off the voices, though! I have both the floppy and CD version and hate the voices.
