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Toonstruck

I'd tried playing Toonstruck before. Christopher Lloyd plays a cartoonist who finds himself in a land of cartoon characters, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit except it has puzzles and all the jokes fall flat.

And that's why I stopped last time. The characters in Toonstruck talk endlessly, and they don't say anything funny. In form, Toonstruck is like Sam & Max Hit the Road; a cartoon in which you control one character, there's another goofier sidekick character you can use as a tool, and there are tons of jokes. But whereas Sam & Max was really, really, really funny, Toonstruck was really, really, really painful. What finally stopped me in my tracks was the horribly cute Fluffy Bun Bun. Admittedly Fluffy was supposed to be an annoying character, but he/she (how to tell with bunnies?) was also supposed to be funny, and instead was grating, with a laugh that was so hideous, so fingernails-on-the-chalkboard that I just couldn't take it anymore and uninstalled the game.

The years flew by, as years do. I had loaned the game to my games-writing friend and he found it playable, although he wished the characters didn't talk so much. I read a few reviews on game sites and they all gave it high ratings. So I decided to try again.

And here is the key to getting through Toonstruck: the ESCape key! Each time you hit it you skip one sentence. And anything the character's have to say of importance they will say over and over. So if you are playing Toonstruck and find the dialogue as painfully unfunny as I did, meet a new character, ask all the questions and hit the escape key until they stop talking. And when you've asked every question you can, say goodbye, say hello again, and see what questions you can still ask. These are the ones you have to ask to finish the game.

Using this technique, the game's pretty good. The puzzles are just what I like; hard enough to make me think, not so hard as to make me cheat. Well, not much, anyway. I had to go to my friend three times. Once I simply hadn't put my mouse exactly where I needed to to realize I could take something. Once I knew what to do but did it slightly wrong and didn't think to try it again until my friend said yeah, that's what you do. And one time I was going insane knowing it was a solvable puzzle, didn't need any props, and that I just had no idea what to do (this was the clown door). So I called my friend and he walked me through it like this:

Friend: Okay, what happens first?

I told him.

Now what do you do?

I told him.

Now what happens?

I told him.

Now what do you do?

I suggested something.

No, try again.

I suggested something else.

No! Think about it some more and call me back later!

Within five minutes I had it. And here I was thinking he was bad at giving clues.

The game improves markedly when you make it to the second CD, where you are prowling around a castle, simply because after a tedious exchange with the guard of the prison cell you must escape from (you have to escape several times, which turns out to be a very amusing running joke) there's no one to talk to. Anyone you see will want to arrest you, and thus the annoying conversations come to an end. The only exception is a psychotic clown who spews non-sequiters, and he's actually quite funny (there's one other funny character, a hard-ass security guard, so don't skip over the dialogue of those two).

As for Christopher Lloyd, well, it's a good idea on paper but Christopher Lloyd mugging in front of a blue screen isn't as successful as Lloyd taking a driving test on Taxi. Within the limits of a computer game you won't get the sort of human/cartoon interaction that made Roger Rabbit such a great movie, and within the limits of bad writing you won't get your star saying anything funny.

But if you want a game with good puzzles, fair animation and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of unfunny dialogue, this is the game for you.

-- Charles Herold -1998