I grew up on LucasArts games, and I still consider Maniac Mansion to be my favorite game of all time, so it's been great to have the opportunity after all these years to play the games that I missed back as a kid. I remembered wanting to play Full Throttle, knowing that this was from a company that made games I loved, but at the time, it almost felt too mature for what I expected from LucasArts. Full Throttle felt like LucasArts trying something new, and for whatever reason, I never got to play it.

After all these years, what I really love about Full Throttle is seeing how LucasArts upends their way of making games in forward-thinking and fascinating ways. While games like Maniac Mansion or Sam & Max might have a ton of options for what characters can do, and plenty of items to pick up and mess around with, Full Throttle pulls all of that back. The options of what to do are simple (yet mostly everything you'd want to do is available despite that restraint), and the items are limited. Yet the puzzles are still challenging and interesting, and take a bit of meandering to figure out.

I also appreciate the restraint in the amount of this game you can explore at any given time. At most, you're given access to three or four key areas, and you have to figure out how to get through these areas. Because of this, Full Throttle feels far less overwhelming than many of their other SCUMM games, but it's an advancement that works quite well.

I love how this remastered version lets you swap from the 1995 version to the updated graphics. This game looks beautiful with the remaster, and captures the tone of these games from back in the day, but it's also great to cut back to the earlier version and have that nostalgia for what these games used to look like. It's also fascinating to see LucasArts attempting a game that's a bit more serious. There's humor here, for sure, but it's not the primary drive of the game. In fact, I was actually surprised by the somber conclusion, which made me wish this had gotten a sequel.

My only real qualm is when the game gets away from its point-and-click nature and tries some other format. There's a section that has you driving down the road, and it's fine, but it's not all that interesting. The worst part, however, is a destruction derby segment that doesn't do this game any favors, and I only got through because of sheer luck and hitting everything I could.

Full Throttle made me want to experience more of these LucasArts games and do a deep dive into this company. I've always loved their games and what they do, and Full Throttle is a fascinating part of their history that's a short but sweet look at how they could stretch out from what we knew them for.