Day of the Tentacle Remastered Review (PS4)

I’ve been eyeballing this game in the PSN store for a while now, but was unsure of whether or not to shell out the money for it. Lucky for me my indecisiveness paid off this time because it was free thanks to PS+. This finally gave me the final push I needed to go ahead and download it and play it. Keep reading to see if I was right to wait for it to become free or if I would have been fine purchasing it a while back.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered is as you can probably tell a Remaster. Hint, it’s in the title. Just as a little background, this game was originally released for the PC all the way back in 1993 by LucasArts and was redone by DoubleFine. Now unlike other remasters, this game was completely redone and got an overhaul in graphics, sound, animation and everything else. You can tell a lot of love went into this project. Anyway, the story is actually a sequel from Maniac Mansion, which you can also play in the game, and tells the story of Dr. Fred and his crazy purple tentacle who has the idea of taking over the world after he grows some arms. It’s up to three weird friends to stop him by ways of time travel. If they travel back to yesterday, purple tentacle doesn’t slurp up some toxic waste and can be stopped. Too bad the time machine really doesn’t work though and you’ll be stuck in the past, present, and future. You’ll have to get all the time machines working again in order to be able to travel back to yesterday in this crazy puzzle adventure game.

While I have to admit, because it wouldn’t be right of me not to, that I did get stuck in more places than I wanted to, I genuinely enjoyed this game. Apparently sticking to console only had made me miss out one some of these great PC games that came out in the early 90’s. I do love those puzzle games and this one was right up my alley. It was difficult, you might need a walkthrough – I did a few times – but it was fun trying to figure everything out yourself. The characters that you play are all weird and you would think that they would never be friends, but they kind of work. The dialogue throughout the game is also one of the highlights as it’s that weird comedy type of thing that’s funny in a smart way and it’s just the type of comedy that I like. Overall the game as a whole was an enjoyable experience.

The playability of this game takes a little getting used to as it was made for PC so it’s a point and click type of game which isn’t really all that easy to do on the PS4. Once you get to be a few hours into the game though you’ll get used to it and it’ll be fine, but it’s just that adjustment period in-between that will have you grumbling. Other than that the game ran smoothly without error and it was a nice surprise.

The graphics for this game are one of the highlights because they were completely redone from the original game, which had some cool retro graphics which you can actually switch back and forth between while you play the game. You can tell that this wasn’t just slapped together to reissue the game and make more money, a lot of time and energy went into this remaster and it shows through the graphics. They were just completely amazing and fit the game perfectly while not taking away from what they used to be on the PC.

There are a bunch of trophies for this game. A bunch of them. There are 58 to be exact including a platinum trophy, and they aren’t hard at all to get. The game requires you to basically do everything that you can within the game in order to get the trophies. This can be done in one playthough, but if you miss some things you can just go back and get them when you play again. To ensure you get the trophies the first time around, I would suggest just not skipping the cut scenes, which there are a lot of. DO NOT PRESS O! Just let them play out and make sure to keep the radio on in green tentacle’s room, which is a little annoying, throughout the game. The rest should be pretty do-able. You will get stuck though so it’s always good to have a simple guide hanging around somewhere just in case.

This is strictly a single-player game and that’s what I like so I was happy.

Overall I give this game a 5 out of 5.

What’s Great:
+ Great story that’s smart and funny all at the same time.
+ A story that was way ahead of it’s time and still plays out well today.
+ A nice challenging puzzle game that will have you scratching your head from time to time.
+ Completely re-done graphics that show that this wasn’t a game that was just thrown together for profit.

What’s Not So Great:
– Sometimes the puzzles can be a little frustrating and you might have to use a walkthrough in order to see what you have to do next.

I genuinely enjoyed this game, and would have been happy to pay the asking price for it. It was a nice game to play for a day, the only problem is that it has no replay ability to it making it a one and done game unless you missed some of the trophies. I couldn’t see going back and playing again because the outcome is always the same and nothing changes. Other than that it was a really great game that I was happy to be able to add to my gaming card. If you’re a fan of puzzle games or want to revisit an old classic I would say to pick this one up.