1949. As Joe King(Lavelle, our Han Solo-y hero), pilot for hire, you have to fly movie star Faye Russel(Valdez, full of herself, sadly not a Leia) to the jungle for a location shoot. You have to get to her first! They will constantly make up a lot of the obnoxiously bicker in this – to be fair, some of that is between guys... with how much there is, it almost had to. You're supposed to side with him, of course. Along with you, you have your pal and mechanic Sparky, the superhero comic book-writing and -collecting, uhm, both, apparently, nerd. One of the best moments is when a short issue of one is read aloud, complete with pronouncing the goofy sound effects. You have to stop Frank Ironstein(Hootkins, over the top. Some say it like the real person...), the evil scientist(that trope certainly never gets old... ugh) turning people into dinosaurs. He runs the James Bond type international terrorist organization, Floda. Indiana Jones the movies are an inspiration, but this is not a movie-tie-in. You survive numerous steep drops. And this goes into sci-fi along with the elements of fantasy, with supernatural beings coexisting peacefully in an otherwise realistic cartoony world. The last part of this feels like they realized it was too short and added some extra. There's a bunch of dumb writing required to get you through the thin plot. You have to skip the whole intro and then load each time you start it up after the first one. While this, of course, can be done when they converse, highly useful for when you've heard it before, it can't be when walking, making the frequent, not to mention extensive, trips back and forth a slog. Saving can be done anytime. You can't die or mess up to where you have to restore progress. A few times you might waste time going back and getting a spare of something used wrong. I can, and will on-going be, comparing this to Beneath a Steel Sky, Dragonsphere and The Curse of Monkey Island, the only others in this genre that I've played. It opens up a lot, far too soon! Paths, sometimes even objects can be hard to see, and you have to manually scan for them. Maps quickly get extremely complex, as well.
A large cast of memorable, distinct characters. One is made to mock EA! Excellent! TV evangelist Jim Baker and his wife Tammy are parodied! They teach monkies, having moved up from raccoons. Will a man save a woman or the other way around? Still, the gender politics of this are pretty troubling. And yes, I realize that was common when this came out. That's not an excuse. It's worse than several of its contemporaries. All the women are comically ugly or curvy, wearing tight and/or revealing clothing, sexualized and often against their will, mostly with a career and/or life that is largely or fully based on their appearance or require them to let it show: a half-naked dancer at a hotel, a diva Hollywood actress, plenty of Amazonians who are of course all about that snu-snu, etc. One you can come on to, until she responds too aggressively, while she was showering no less. This is after passing silently by ones that are in less awkward situations. And lo and behold, he might just be rewarded with sex or 1st base. They're not so much no help as they're a problem, in the way and irritatingly complaining, and we're supposed to laugh and cheer as the protagonist insults them, sometimes specifically by our request. One of the very first things you do is put on a dress, wig and comical fake breasts to pass for female. This comes right after you were fooled by a biological male who identifies as a girl. Because it's a joke when someone puts on clothes, make-up and the like that don't fit what they were born as! How undignified, to be viewed as the lesser of half of the world's population! I'm in stitches. So are, sometimes literally, all of the real-life victims of beatings and even, some say as much as 1 every 3rd day, murder based on that viewpoint in its extreme. Especially the ones perceived to be "tricking" someone by that. Given the setting, there's some xenophobia regarding the people living there and their culture. Thankfully, a lot of the joke material is not like that. And no, I wish I didn't feel compelled to analyze this from a feminist perspective. However, this constantly brings up its view on these subjects.
The inventory box only shows 4 at a time, and you soon spend forever scrolling. You click on one of the commands: open, close, move, give, talk, get, look, use: then on an object, inventory item, etc. Click on object, location to move there. Why not only the latter. Made by 3 people on a minuscule budget, which I can respect... this does lead to simple programming, and, yes, I understand and sympathize with the strain that puts on people and the expectations should be adjusted... it shows. It keeps randomly switching back and forth between whether to use LMB or RMB, you'll Command and he'll Look or Walk. You'll keep doing what you're supposed to to proceed, and he'll keep doing something else, until you finally find the right and narrow combination of the keys, the order and what else it thinks you should've already done. You keep thinking you're doing something you shouldn't when you're not. There's no logic to it. That goes for some of the puzzles as well.
There is a lot of violence in this. It is easy to get a legally free copy today, with the solid 49 minute soundtrack, a 35 page interesting, in-depth, picture-laden, code-explaining, spoiler-ridden making of, a useful manual in 25(4 per language, English, French, German and Italian), both in .pdf format. I recommend this to fans of graphical 2D point-and-click adventure games. 7/10
